How many times have you gone to a foreign city for a weekend and bought yourself a guidebook that gives you far more than ever wanted or needed?

Hachette's Great Weekend series has attempted to sort this out with guides, the latest being for Venice, broken down into four serviceable parts - what to see, where to stay and eat, what to shop for and where, and a section on nightlife.

The section on what to see divides the city into the obvious districts, such as Piazza San Marco, Around the Rialto and the Campo di Santa Margherita district (village Venice). The descriptions are, by necessity, short, as the whole guide is only 130-odd pages, and if you want detail you will have to look elsewhere. But it is very practical. For each area it includes at least one place to eat, which saves you having to scrabble around in the eating section.

The shopping section is serious. It suggests routes and subjects with addresses and phone numbers of lots of speciality shops - those selling stationery, fabrics, carnival masks and costumes, linen, leather, jewellery and toys. The guide suggests that stationery, from one of the many "legatorie", makes the typical Venetian souvenir and is both chic and inexpensive. At the other end of the price scale is the names and addresses of the craftsmen who will make either a smart all-wooden speedboat or a gondola. Gian Franca Vianello makes five or six gondolas a year. But they are difficult to transport, being 36ft long and weighing half a ton.

With 350 colour photos and maps, lists of words and phrases, this is perfect for a weekend away - but not, probably, for any longer.