Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #936333 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12
• Formats: Folded Map, Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Map

Customer Reviews

Accurate but not suitable for most driving situations
I have no complaints about the accuracy, legibility, and clarity of this map [and others in the series]. But I've just returned from a month in France and Italy, navigating backroads to restaurants, gites, and country houses, and this map failed me in one important way: it is too small for driving except between big cities. France has a wonderfully logical street system [excluding the impossible complications of the pre-modern cities, of course] and is one of the easiest countries to drive in. But everything is densely packed into small areas for which the scale of this map is simply insufficient. It is simply impossible to navigate in Europe at this scale. If you buy this map for navigation, be sure to supplement it with one of the many large-scale, spiral-bound books available, preferrably also by Michelin, as others can be terribly inaccurate. American drivers are dismayed by the weirdly abstract and opaque signage system used in France, and unless you're bilingual, it's hard to keep up with street signs at driving speed. Tailgating is the rule, so you can't really slow down to read most of the time. So you must have a bigger map than this one, and spiral bound is most convenient.

And if you're planning on driving in Italy... Really, I have to recommend that you hire a local. Italy can be a nightmare of bad signage, decayed infrastructure, disgruntled public servants, and the twistiest damned roads this side of the Hindu Kush. No map will save you in Italy. You have to be born there, I think.