Some Spring features, and the new guidebook

I spent part of March and most of April on the road, in Tuscany, researching an update to a major guidebook (about which more soon), but while I was away one or two things have appeared on- and offline.

Most satisfying of the lot was the publication of the new edition of our award-winning family travel guidebook (with a slightly revised name), Frommer’s Tuscany, Umbria & Florence With Your Family. I’m always happy to hear opinions on what’s right, or what’s wrong, about the book, so if you’ve read it or (better still) test-driven it in the wild, do leave a comment below or get in touch. If you’re a journalist or blogger and fancy reviewing it, drop me a line and I’ll arrange that. It’s not yet published in the US, so you can get a jump on the rest if you fancy seeing it now.

Three features appeared online in the last month. The first was a contribution to the Guardian’s 10 of the Best Summer Holidays for Under-Fives, in which I went with the island of Elba (out of season), and these friendly family apartments in particular. As part of my regular tech-expert Q&A slot for the Sunday Telegraph, I answered the reader question: Where can I search online for affordable alternative accommodation? Among my suggestions for sidestepping the usual villa, apartment, and hotel websites were the excellent “pop-up B&B” site Crashpadder.com and MonasteryStays.com, which sells what you think it sells, currently in Italy only (but watch this space). MonasteryStays.com recently hosted me with the Suore di Santa Elisabetta, in Florence, a friendly place I’d certainly recommend to anyone travelling on a budget and bringing a car into the city.

Most recently, I wrote an extended slideshow piece for Frommers.com on San Frediano, Florence’s rapidly-changing left-bank neighbourhood:

Cities change. It’s what they do. However, one of the draws of Florence has been that its center is stuck in time. It was old when Lucy and George traded gazes in E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel, Room with a View. It was old when the English Grand Tourists of the 1700s came to study the palazzo architecture and church art. Heck, some of it was even old when Michelangelo raised his giantDavid outside the Palazzo Vecchio. He’d still be able to navigate much of Florence’s centro storico, without Google Maps.

However, one part that is changing — and fast — is San Frediano.

There’s more in the pipeline, including three more guidebooks due out before the end of 2011 and hopefully an update to my Florence iPhone app (iTunes link). My Amazon Author Page has details of a couple of the books.