Rick's Italian travel books

If you carry a library with you your bag will be very heavy. If you visit just Tuscany, buy a Tuscany book, if you visit all of Italy, but an Italy book. Rather carry a Ipad with you which takes no room and get on line to find whatever you need. Maybe download the books in it. All hotels and B&B have wi-fi nowadays and also several bars and restaurants all over ITaly. You are never too far from a hotspot in Italy.

Nikki , It depends on how deep your focus is in a particular area . For our recent trip to Italy , we actually brought three books: Italy , Florence and Tuscany ; amd Rome . While the Italy book was more than adequate , The other books were particularly useful since we are art and architecture lovers and spent a week each in Rome and Florence . You have to gauge how much detail you want depending on your personal tastes . Are you a Rennaisance art hound ? Is so the separate Florence book might be a good choice , Best to lay out your general plans and then decide . Whatever you do ,you are going to love Italy!

I asked a question similar to this at the Rick Steves travel center a couple of years ago. The advice I received was that if you are staying a week or more in an area, you would probably want to buy the smaller book. If you are only staying a few nights, the Italy book would probably be enough. I always check out the smaller book from the public library and read through it on my own. That way I know if there is something in there that I would want to have on the trip. So far, I have always just used the larger book. (Last year we traveled for 3 weeks in France. Same thing, I just took France 2012 and skipped the books on Paris and Provence. While it was worth browsing through the library copy, it was not worth lugging along. The smaller books cover a lot of things in more detail and add some ideas and destinations-but for me, they were things I only would have done if I had had more time in the area.)

Just to add to Roberto's excellent suggestion to bring an iPad, you can also download Rick's free audio tours. Actually they are more than just audio, there are also photos and maps to go along!

The main benefit of the city/region specific books is the walking tours and suggested itinerarires. One option (kind of "old school") is to rip out the pages you want to take with you. Another option is to photocopy only those pages you need, within reason, obviously. What I've done is to take along a thin three ring binder with copies of what I need for each day, organized by day. Each morning, I grab the pages I need and take those with us.

I am NOT a computer geek and just got my first Ipad. Wonder if anyone has tried scanning the desired pages of their books, putting them in the cloud/on drop box and then downloading to Ipad. (Will that take too much memory/space?) I bought all Rick's Italy 2013 books before I knew I was getting an Ipad. Although I love "real" books, because of weight, I would have bought the ebooks instead this time......I am traveling solo and don't want to be heavy laden with books but want the great info.

The places I stayed accepted the R.S. ebook for discounts mentioned. The only books I brought were Knoff Mapguides. Small at 5" x 6.5", but map pages fold out to 7x9. Along with my Kindle, I had everything for walking tours. An iPad, though, sounds like it would be ideal - along with paper maps.

I bought the newest RS's Italy book to plan my latest trip and then used my older one and tore out the pages of the areas I was visiting. That way I had the maps, highlights and "At a Glance" sections to refer back to.
As I left each area, I simply threw away the pages.