Best Florence Travel

Take in a gondolier's sweet song while gliding past Venetian palaces, sample olives and wines as you traverse Tuscany's storybook hills, or be humbled amid thousands of years of Roman history and art; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, politics, cuisine, wine, customs Free, convenient pull-out Rome map (included in print version), plus over 137 colour maps Covers Rome, Turin, Piedmont, the Italian Riviera, Milan, the Lakes, Dolomites, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Naples, Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and more. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Garwood has a history degree from York University.

Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he came to know, where the congeniality of living souls is thrust against the dark weight of history. Praise for Iberia “From the glories of the Prado to the loneliest stone villages, here is Spain, castle of old dreams and new realities.” — The New York Times “Massive, beautiful . “From the glories of the Prado to the loneliest stone villages, here is Spain, castle of old dreams and new realities.” — The New York Times “Massive, beautiful . unquestionably some of the best writing on Spain [and] the best that Mr. Michener has ever done on any subject.” — The Wall Street Journal “A dazzling panorama .

National Best Seller From the best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful nonfiction debut—an “honest, engaging, and very moving account of a writer searching for herself in words.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred) In Other Words is a revelation. It is fitting that Italy, a nation with no unifying language for centuries, should inspire a writer of Jhumpa Lahiri’s stature to organize her reflections around the concept of exile. Lahiri’s exuberant tone may surprise readers used to the understatement and quiet grace of her acclaimed novels and short stories. In Other Words ends at a crossroads, with Lahiri set to leave Rome and return to America, not knowing what will come of her affair with Italian. Lahiri reached out to Italian when English stopped offering her the solitude she craved as a writer; now that she has left Italy we must wait to see where the arrow of exile points her.” —Joseph Luzzi, The New York Times Book Review “Bold, elegant, poignant. Her joy in working with language emanates from every page; the uncomplicated frankness of her voice allows her to cover a satisfyingly wide range of subjects. She expresses and reframes sentiments about the nature of love, both romantic and maternal, through the lens of her relationship to Italian, and offers fascinating peeks into her world. As a milestone in Lahiri’s career, In Other Words embodies a tremendous feat: the relinquishment of the mastery and comfort of the old, and the complete, unsparing immersion in the new. In what felt to her like a dangerous leap of faith, she lets her insights stand naked and alone, garbed in neither character nor plot—and all the more beautiful and true for their lovely guilelessness.. . A pleasure to read.” —Emily Zhao, The Harvard Crimson “What separates an artist from a creator is one’s insatiable desire to develop his or her craft, one’s perpetual feelings of dissatisfaction and the willingness to embrace challenges, even if that means reinvention. The Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer never fully identified with English, or with Bengali for that matter, leading her to seek a third language . It allows her to achieve the highest form of art: pieces so transformative a reader cannot help but regard strangers with greater understanding.” —Anne Kniggendorf, Kansas City Star “Deeply pleasurable. In Other Words gives off the intoxication of metamorphosis; it puts one in the company of a beautiful mind engaged in a sustaining and bracing discipline. The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker notes that ‘language comes so naturally to us that we’re apt to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is.’ On every page—including the half that monolinguists can’t fathom—Lahiri’s magnificent book reminds us.” —Karen Long, Los Angeles Times “Urgent and raw . In her critically praised works of fiction, Lahiri drew on the experience of her parents, who clung to the traditions of India long after coming to the U.S. But her new book reveals how deeply Lahiri has felt displacement and alienation herself, and the thrilling distance she’ll go to make sense of it. The memoir chronicles her obsession with Italian, which leads her to take on the radical experiment of writing this book in a language she’s still trying to master. Using discomfort to shatter her own status quo, she produces a startlingly different voice—still Lahiri’s, but stripped down to its essence.” —Leigh Haber, O, The Oprah Magazine “Dazzling . She reflects on everything from the challenges of thought and expression in a foreign tongue to the mystery of creativity.” —Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness “Deeply personal and candid . Lahiri’s many fans will not be surprised to learn that she succeeds in her linguistic undertaking, achieving her usual artistry and delivering an impassioned valentine to the most lyrical of languages.” —Julie Hale, Book Page “Elegant, emotionally resonant . In her first nonfiction work, her first truly autobiographical writing, Lahiri records her linguistic journey with unblinking honesty. Being viewed as foreign—in India for not being Indian; in the U.S. for not looking American; in her chosen temporary home for being other—‘no one, anywhere, assumes I speak the languages that are part of me,’ Lahiri wryly observes. Written in hard-won Italian and reverberating with the energy of literary experiment, Lahiri’s In Other Words announces the birth of a modernist. It is a pleasure to witness sudden artistic metamorphosis, and Lahiri’s transizione radicale from English to Italian creates an urgent aesthetic tenor that contrasts sharply with the author’s hallmark restraint . Here, in the spirit of Eliot and Stevens, Joyce and Beckett, Lahiri discovers that ‘unknown words represent a dizzying, fruitful abyss.’ Like her modernist predecessors, she accepts l’abisso as the simultaneously generative and paralyzing force behind her art . Here is a portrait of the artist wrought from the raw material of exile, capturing rather than attempting to transcend a ‘state of total confusion.’” —Urmila Seshagiri, Public Books “Intimate and powerful . In Other Words is a travelogue, a diary, a recounting of the author’s flirtation and, finally, all-out love affair with Italian, her third language, after Bengali and English. In Other Words details her struggle to understand her identity in a language that, in spite of her commitment to its form, will forever be foreign to her.” —Baihley Grandison, Writer’s Digest. The English translation by Ann Goldstein participates in an exquisite duet across the page with Lahiri’s Italian. Strikingly honest, lyrical, untouched by sentimentality, In Other Words chronicles as philosophical and quotidian a courtship with a language as Ovid’s The Art of Love does with amore itself . In Other Words is [also] a family story, one dealing with the vicissitudes and unpredictable blessings of relocating husband and children to a different world, with how memories are constructed, with the sense of life as makeshift. Whether or not Lahiri chooses to write her future books in Italian, what matters is not linguistic provenance but the quality of the prose. “A revelation of how a writer finds her voice, intertwined with meditations on the estrangement that her identity as the child of Indian immigrants has imposed on her relationship to English . A linguistic memoir that actually tells the story of a transformation of identity: in Lahiri’s hands, an invaluable insight into the craft of writing, not as storytelling but as speaking the self into existence.” —Marthine Satris, San Francisco Chronicle “Stunning . Over the course of four novels and story collections, Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri has written about themes of identity, estrangement and belonging. The author has spent a lifetime caught in the clash between her parents’ Old World customs and the American culture that has so rewarded her achievements . In the end, Italy proves to be the author’s Switzerland, a place to neutralize tensions that have haunted her for decades. The core of the book—and the thing that makes it more than just a writer’s memoir—is the scrupulous, detailed, almost obsessive chronicling of what it’s like to learn a language as an adult. It will touch every reader young and old, about the pleasure and pain of undertaking a new experience that tests one’s personhood and intellectual mettle.” —Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News “A lexical love affair . The progress of the book mirrors Lahiri’s growing confidence and skill, her obsession with the language, immersion in it, and the texts become more layered, more linguistically adventurous. Raised by Bengali immigrants, Lahiri decides to throw off the chains of her family’s heritage and her adopted America by writing a book about moving to Rome and learning Italian—in Italian. Lahiri both describes and demonstrates an expat’s push-pull of immersion and alienation, a process through which a novelist known for lyricism is refreshingly reduced to stark simplicity.” —Boris Kachka, Vulture, 8 Books You Need to Read this February. Her original text and Ann Goldstein's English translation are on facing pages, reinforc[ing] that this is as much a work of poetry as prose . In Other Words shares many of the themes of Lahiri’s fiction: alienation, uprooting, and assimilating, the difficulties of adapting to a new culture . In the memoir, we find an author who understands that the best writing does not only change characters on the page, but affects the writer and the reader. Perhaps it is those altering revelations—the ones that move us beyond the comfort of the known—that bring us closer to a cohesive sense of self.” —Hilary Reid, Brooklyn Rail. She’s so committed to her new tongue that she declined to translate it into English; the job has gone to Ann Goldstein, a fellow Italophile whose translation credits include all seven Elena Ferrante novels; she is lauded as part of the reason the series has been so successful in the U.S. Lahiri’s original Italian runs side by side with Goldstein’s English in this linguistic memoir . A quiet coming of age—both a liberation from the constraints of perfectionism, and a meditation on new beginnings.” —Sarah Begley, TIME “When people say that learning a language is like falling in love, they only seem to remember the honeymoon period. In order to evolve as a writer, the freedom afforded by an alien tongue was necessary—even if, or precisely because, she will inevitably make mistakes. Lahiri trades English for Italian to inaugurate a new phase of her career, for ‘from a creative point of view there is nothing so dangerous as security’ . During three years in Rome, she embraces linguistic exile—and finds that, writing in Italian, she has ‘the freedom to be imperfect.’ The restraint provides a way to be amazed by language all over again, ultimately producing the same precise, layered metaphors found in her prize-winning fiction. “Incantatory: an adventurous, disciplined, and discovery-laden exercise in linguistic ardor; an unconventional autobiography that has the Dionysian drama of a quest saga and the Apollonian tidiness of a primer. In Other Words allows you to witness a beloved, hugely successful scribe give birth to a new, untested, uncertain yet determined authorial self . The book’s chapters unfold as a series of thoughtful reflections: her long courtship of Italian; the discoveries she makes and discomforts she feels during her self-imposed exile; her challenging upbringing . a record of creative and linguistic restlessness, the culmination of an encounter that Lahiri likens to love at first sight . In Other Words proceeds from [a] freedom and embrace of imperfection, its story [one] of flight, struggle, and regeneration, metamorphosis. It may not be a coincidence that [Italian] is a language in which pronouns commonly disappear into their verbs; in which a writer might inhabit fully the act of writing, harmonize with it, each transforming the other; in which the doer and the doing become one.” —Michelle Orange, Bookforum. For one thing, it’s a memoir, [and] Lahiri has been famous as a fiction writer since she won the Pulitzer Prize for Interpreter of Maladies. Though she has published personal essays, she’s never probed her own creativity and emotional process in such depth or with such bracing candor. Lahiri describes In Other Words as the ‘linguistic autobiography’ of a writer seeking a new voice, but it is also a kind of travel book that charts a personal pilgrimage between Italy and America . No one would deny that a native speaker has capacities and instincts that the learner flails at, and Lahiri does a lovely job of documenting the effort it takes to get hold of these—or fail to do so. “In this slim, lyrical nonfiction debut, Pulitzer-winner Lahiri traces the progress of her love affair with the Italian language. Unlike Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov, who also wrote in adopted languages, Lahiri doesn’t leap directly into fiction. In a perfectly titled memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist chronicles her efforts to learn and write Italian. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.’ An honest, self-deprecating, and very moving account of a writer searching for herself in words.” — Kirkus (starred review).

Take in a gondolier's sweet song while gliding past Venetian palaces, sample olives and wines as you traverse Tuscany's storybook hills, or be humbled amid thousands of years of Roman history and art; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, politics, cuisine, wine, customs Free, convenient pull-out Rome map (included in print version), plus over 137 colour maps Covers Rome, Turin, Piedmont, the Italian Riviera, Milan, the Lakes, Dolomites, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Naples, Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and more. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Garwood has a history degree from York University.

Take in a gondolier's sweet song while gliding past Venetian palaces, sample olives and wines as you traverse Tuscany's storybook hills, or be humbled amid thousands of years of Roman history and art; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, politics, cuisine, wine, customs Free, convenient pull-out Rome map (included in print version), plus over 137 colour maps Covers Rome, Turin, Piedmont, the Italian Riviera, Milan, the Lakes, Dolomites, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Naples, Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and more. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Garwood has a history degree from York University.

They will tell you how to be mysterious and sensual, make your boyfriend jealous, the right way to approach weddings and the gym, and they will share their address book in Paris for where to go at the end of the night, for a birthday, for a smart date, for vintage finds and much more. De Maigret’s photography and a witty, wise, often tongue-in-cheek delivery puts the reader on a sure path to achieving the French femme’s je ne sais quoi .”. — Publisher’s Weekly “You don’t have to be French to be a Parisian.“. —Karl Lagerfeld. “Very, very funny. I was laughing out loud by the end.”. —Plum Sykes, author of Bergdorf Blondes and The Debutante Divorcée Anne Berest is the author of two novels and a biography of Françoise Sagan published this year; she also writes for television, cinema, and theater.

Check out Rick Steves Best of Italy . Since 1973, Rick Steves has spent about four months a year exploring Europe.

“This is history on a grand scale, with a sweep and ambition that is rare… A proper historical epic of dazzling range and achievement.” —William Dalrymple, The Guardian The epic history of the crossroads of the world—the meeting place of East and West and the birthplace of civilization It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. For Frankopan, the brutish West owes its more enlightened traditions to the lands east of Italy and west of China, which were, for centuries, 'the centre of the world'… Frankopan marshals diverse examples to demonstrate the interconnectedness of cultures, showing in vivid detail the economic and social impact of the silk and the slave trades, the Black Death, and the Buddhist influence on Christianity.”. — The New Yorker “In his new book, The Silk Roads , Frankopan has created something that forces us to sit up and reconsider the world and the way we've always thought about it… The book takes us by surprise right from the start.”. —Nishant Dahiya, NPR “This is deeply researched popular history at its most invigorating, primed to dislodge routine preconceptions and to pour in other light. “One of Mr. Frankopan’s gifts as a storyteller is his ability to draw unusual connections across his vast canvas… [he] packs his tale with fascinating trivia… Frankopan has written a rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world.”. —Sadanand Dhume, The Wall Street Journal “Frankopan casts his net widely in this work of dizzying breadth and ambition… Those opening to any page will find fascinating insights that illuminate elusive connections across time and place… Frankopan approaches his craft with an acerbic wit, and his epochal perspective throws the foibles of the modern age into sharp relief”. — Publishers Weekly (starred review). “A glorious read. “In his new book, The Silk Roads , Frankopan has created something that forces us to sit up and reconsider the world and the way we've always thought about it… The book takes us by surprise right from the start.”. —Nishant Dahiya, NPR. “Superb… Peter Frankopan is an exceptional storyteller… The lands of the Silk Roads are of renewed importance, and Frankopan’s book will be indispensable to anyone who wants to make sense of this union of past and present.”. —Philip Seib, The Dallas Morning News. “This is, to put it mildly, an ambitious book… By spinning all these stories into a single thread, Peter Frankopan attempts something bold: A history of the world that shunts the centre of gravity eastward… Mr. Frankopan writes with clarity and memorable detail… Where other histories put the Mediterranean at the centre of the story, under Mr. Frankopan it is important as the western end of a transcontinental trade with Asia in silks, spices, slaves—and ideas.”. — The Economist. “It’s time we recognized the importance of the East to our history, insists this magnificent study… The breadth and ambition of this swashbuckling history by Peter Frankopan should come as no surprise… A book that roves as widely as the geography it describes, encompassing worlds as far removed as those of Herodotus and Saddam Hussein, Hammurabi and Hitler… It is a tribute to Frankopan’s scholarship and mastery of sources in multiple languages that he is as sure-footed on the ancient world as he is on the medieval and modern… Deftly constructed… The Silk Roads is a powerful corrective to parochialism.”. —Justin Marozzi, The Sunday Times (U.K.). Frankopan upends the usual world-history narrative oriented around ancient Rome and Greece and the irrepressible rise of Europe… In a series of brisk chapters—The Road of Faiths, The Road of Furs and so on—studded with state-of-the-art research that is sourced from at least a dozen languages, the author brings wondrous history to vivid life… In The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan has provided a bracing wake up call.”. —Matthew Price, The National (AE).

Take in a gondolier's sweet song while gliding past Venetian palaces, sample olives and wines as you traverse Tuscany's storybook hills, or be humbled amid thousands of years of Roman history and art; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, politics, cuisine, wine, customs Free, convenient pull-out Rome map (included in print version), plus over 137 colour maps Covers Rome, Turin, Piedmont, the Italian Riviera, Milan, the Lakes, Dolomites, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Naples, Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and more. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Garwood has a history degree from York University.

Take in a gondolier's sweet song while gliding past Venetian palaces, sample olives and wines as you traverse Tuscany's storybook hills, or be humbled amid thousands of years of Roman history and art; all with your trusted travel companion. Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, politics, cuisine, wine, customs Free, convenient pull-out Rome map (included in print version), plus over 137 colour maps Covers Rome, Turin, Piedmont, the Italian Riviera, Milan, the Lakes, Dolomites, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Florence, Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Naples, Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and more. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Garwood has a history degree from York University.

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites us back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. As Mayes rediscovers her taste for la dolce vita, she embarks on a journey of cultural awakening and embraces a newfound romance with the Italian language and people. Mayes is as generous a cook as she is a writer, flavoring her story with tasty descriptions of local gustatory delights--many of which are included in a small recipe book.