Eyewitness Travel Guides Spain: Amazon.ca: Dorling Kindersley: Books

Product Description

Book Description

A map of Spain aiming to provide a real sense of its landscape and geography. All major roads and routes are numbered and over 2000 sights of special interest to tourists are highlighted. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
This guide helps you to get the most from your visit to Spain. Read the first page

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars pretty for your coffee table, not very useful for traveling, Jun 22 2004

By

private__ (Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyewitness Travel Guides Spain (Paperback)

I think the title of my review wraps it all up: the eyewitness guide to Spain is a work of graphic art. Its highlight is probably the great work on the maps, both small and large scale, which are of great help as you navigate around the citise and towns looking for the hot spots. As a tool for reaching all of the sights you want to see, I would say that the Eyewitness Guide is among the best, with its close-up street maps, neighborhood maps and public transportation guides. In addition to this, as another positive comment I would say that it is a great guide to take on a trip if you don't have much time and you need information presented in an easy-to-read, simple manner. The drawings and photos, and the way they are laid out, is very appealing.

The advantages stop there, however. If you really want to get to know a city, town or region, you simply need more in-depth historical and cultural information on the sights you are seeing. Most of the descriptions of places in the Eyewitness Guide for Spain do not stretch beyond a paragraph or two, which is quite superficial in my opinion. The country is simply to big to be covered in this sort of book with so many nice pictures and drawings, but so little of the written word that you will need as you travel around.

If you really want to know about the history behind the church, monument, museum or park you have traveled so far to see, you will definitely need another guidebook to give you any kind of detail, since the information here is utterly superficial. This flaw becomes far worse when you read the sections on sights that are off the beaten track (which are so many!). The descriptions become utterly superficial, with sometimes no more than a sentence dedicated to a whole town or village filled with things to see.

VERY harsh critique also for the hotel and restaurant information, which is limited to places designed for the rich and famous, or at least the very upper of the upper-middle class, especially in a country like Spain, which has so much to offer at a lower price but with high quality. The best guides give you a little information on all styles of lodging and food, from low budget to luxury, but these guides make little effort to do so, and even the information on the laps of luxury is limited to little symbols, instead of providing descriptions like other guides do. If you rely on this book for advice, you will think Spain is outrageously expensive, and this simply is not true.

With this combination of characteristics, I think Eyewitness is good to take along for a short trip in which you have little time to spend seeing the city and you don't really care about getting any deep information on what you're seeing. Otherwise, keep looking for another guidebook, ESPECIALLY if you are going anywhere outside of the big cities.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Tour Guide Book, July 30 2009

By

EG (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyewitness Travel Guides Spain (Turtleback)

If you are going to multiple locations in Spain, I would recommend this book since it has all the information you need.

If you want a summary (in a brief paragraph or so) of the history of a monument, for example, this is the book for you. On the other hand, if you are the type that wants to know the complete details (2-3 pages dedicated to a monument), don't get this book since it does not provide complete details.

The book also has nice color pictures which is a great plus!

Only disadvantage is that the book is a little heavy so when carrying it around, it might get annoying (but if you have a Knapsack you should be fine).

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent tour book, Jan 16 2011

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SKS - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyewitness Travel Guides Spain (Paperback)

This book has everything you need to know for your one-week or two-week tour of Spain. It would help you better understand and appreciate the culture of the country, even on a guided tour. The guide is a little heavy, but I carried it with me on my two-week trip to Spain in 2009, everyday. It was worth it.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars WATCH OUT SPAIN - HERE I COME
EXCELLENT TRAVEL GUIDE. IT'S ATTENTION TO DETAILS AND INFORMATION ON VARIOUS CURRENT AND HISTORICAL CONTENT IS WELL WRITTEN AND BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED/PHOTOGRAPHED. Read more

Published on Mar 10 2009 by Jennifer L. Young

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Orientation!
I can honestly say that no other brand of travel guide will give you the feel of a country more than DK's Eyewitness series. Read more

Published on July 19 2004 by Z. D. Houghton