Cheap Sleeps in Italy '99 Ed

I have to confess to being a huge fan of Sandra Gustafson's entire line of Cheap Sleeps/Cheap Eats guides. I first started using them when I was a budget consious traveller in college and law school. The I stayed in only the cheapest of her "Cheap Sleeps" confident that she only recommended clean and safe hotels of distinction. Now that I am a more discerning (and less budget conscious) traveller, I find that I still rely on Ms. Gustafson's recommendations. That is because her watchword is really not CHEAP but VALUE. She has ferreted out the hotels where for $80 a night you live better than most places that serve up $150 a night rooms. I also find that by mentioning that I am relying on Sandra Gustafson's recommendation when booking or checking in, that these sm all hotel owners welcome me warmly. She must truly leave a good impression when she stays in these exceptional-value hotels and B&Bs. So let Sandra Gustafson pave the way for you. I have NEVER...Read more

I purchased this Cheap Sleeps for an as yet unbooked trip to Italy. I have used the Cheap Sleeps/Eats in London, so expected to get valuable information from this book. I was not disappointed. My biggest problem will be deciding on which of the dozens of places Gustafson recommends to stay when I go. I know from past experience that I won't be disappointed in any of them, because she gives any cautions required right up front. I would definitely buy any Cheap Sleeps/Eats book for a city I was visiting.

The value of a really good book in other spheres of literature can mean hours spent in another time and place in a trance of pleasure, or perhaps the true satisfaction of gaining a comprehensive understanding of a concept or event that had formally intrigued or baffled you.

These are considerable and valuable pleasures of course, but when a book like this gets things absolutely right, it can mean a trip being enhanced to an immeasurable degree, resulting in memories that will stay with you until the day you die.

This was my experience with this book, and when I awoke on our first morning in our hotel, the sun was streaming in over a terrace bedecked with lemon trees and classical sculptures, I could hear the mass being sung by the nuns in the nearby convent, and I could look directly above my bed to see a deep relief sculpture of prancing angels, it was difficult not to be convinced, for a split second that I had not survived the flight over, slipped by the pearly gates due to...Read more