Berlitz's Vienna pcket guide is a wonderfull gem for our upcoming tour of the imperial capitol. This book, i.e., Berlitz Vienna includes items such as: hotels, museums and resturants. One thing that is sort of obsolete is their usefull expressions since most people having a working knowledge in English.

I am from Cyprus, and I found this book very intresting. The author does a good job talking about the culture of the island and gives the basics for anyone that wants to pay a visit to this beautiful island. It is not in great detail but for a pocket book and for its prize has a great deal of information.

This little book is chock full of information about places to go and things to see, but as rapidly as Malaysia is growing, things change rapidly. A little dated..

Having lived in Munich a friend showed me this booklet some days ago after he had bought it for an upcoming trip. This little booklet provides basic information on the city, the sights one has to visit and also has some useful maps. However, their recommendations for hotels, restaurants and whatnot maybe suitable for some visitors but they are far from being real good tips locals would provide you with.

This is a weak travel guide, and you'll probably find yourself in mid-trip buying some other guidebook, plus a fistful of maps. The information in the book is organized inefficiently, keeping the reader fluttering this way and that trying to find restaurants and historical information. The hotel listings are abysmal, consisting of one or two places for most cities, some with information that was dated at publication time. The restaurant listings are worse, author Altman is, at best, a peculiar and reluctant gourmand. For example the Notai restaurant in Bologna that Altman calls "elegant, serving excellent regional cuisine" is strictly average, with the same menu as dozens of other good, but undistinguished, places in the area. The only other restaurant he mentions in Bologna is a trattoria, indicating to this reader that he only spent one day in the city, had lunch and dinner, and left us with these two meagre entries for the center of Bolognese cuisine.

On the other hand, the best restaurant in Genova, as any taxi driver or concierge can tell you, is a seafood house in the port area called Vittorio's - a fun and popular place with amazing food. The only restaurants Altman mentions are one nice place outside of town (unappealing since driving in and around Genova is a nightmare), and, of course, a trattoria. Sounds like Altman had one lunch and one dinner in Genova also. The book simply fails to mention the wonderful Aquarium that is Genova's best tourist attraction, although it may not have been open when Altman visited.

Beyond these critical failures in restaurants and hotels, Altman fails to provide important information about parking, mass transit, store and restaurant hours, etc. There are no useful road maps or city maps, so it is often impossible to get to a desired location within a city without another guidebook. Even when describing attractions, his prose is sodden and self-important, as when he argues with Napoleon's characterization of Venice's St.Mark's square as Europe's "finest drawing room". No, says, Altman, "this is no drawing room, Bonaparte, it's a great piece of Italian theatre". Give me a break. Speaking of Venice, imagine a guidebook that fails to explain how to park a car and catch a water taxi in a city famous for banning land vehicles.

Guide books cost so much money, and there are so many out there on Italy, do yourself a favor and buy another one. Otherwise you'll be halfway through your trip and you'll buy the other one anyway.