Sicily (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

1 Disappointing. Even DK can run out of steam.
How things change. Until now, I had only good things to say about Eyewitness Guides. They used to be top of the heap. True, there have been decidedly average jobs (Japan was one, beaten by unlikely contender, Rough Guide, hands down), but Sicily is a major disappointment.

The first and the main thing that is wrong with this book - not enough content, not enough informed text, and tired cliched writing at that, too. The appearance is still there: nice pictures, helpful layout, but there's nothing to read. Description of major attractions is superficial at best. History section ("through the ages") is a bit better, but this is about the only strong point.

There isn't even a decent map of Palermo (tourist office gives you a better one for free), and the maps which are included cannot even be bothered to show a railway station. Information on airport transfers? Forget about it. Talk about sleeping on their laurels.

For comparison: a few years ago, a guide to much less visited (a far more difficult) Sardinia was sharp, well-researched and informative. It seems that they work so hard to enter the league of major guide producers to every popular destination, alongside with Lonely Planet, Fodor's, Frommers and Rough Guide, that they lost their sense of purpose and, most importantly, their pride of superbly produced, all-stops-pulled, product.

I used to commend DK on their cheerful style of writing, so different from a grumpy and grumbling world of Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. Now, it seems, they had taken another extreme: research is so superficial it appears not to exist at all, and practical advice so general they can apply to almost country.

Alternative? I had Frommer's as my second guide on my Sicilian trip, and I found it very good (actually, much better researched and deeper than their latest full-Italy guide). There are drawbacks, but overall it was extremely useful. More than can be said about this Eyewitness Guide.

2 Not so usefull
I went to Sicily this summer and pack this guide into my Lugage. I did not found it so usefull as I expected, because it is not good to plan the trip (like a Michelin the green guide) and the hotel guide is very limited (it was only useful in Siracuse). The information is packed by regions but the major marks are not highlighted. It is written as you were traveling through the island. I also bought the Michelin green guide to Italy, the information about sicily is less detailed but I found more usefull for planning the trip.

Though the information is correct and more or less updated I still found the book to be full with unusefull information. Example: How to get the!! Came on everybody that think to travel to Sicily know how to get there. Spend 10 pages with that info is uninteresting.

Buy the Michelin green guide instead to plan the trip. A Michelin red guide to chose hotels and restaurants and blue guide from MacAdam for historic background. You can also get a cheap (very good, but very ugly) guide from Tourism Offices in Sicily.

3 On Target
We have been to Sicily three times and find the Rough Guide to be unerringly on target. Its assessments of the priority of things to see and do, its reviews of sights, hotels, restaurants have been the most helpful of the many guides we used. Short on color photos but long on info, the rough guide let us find the beauty quickly to see and taste it for ourselves, and steered us to many interesting places in Palermo, Patti, Milazzo, Messina and Syracuse.