Customer Reviews

Top 10 San Antonio and Austin (EYEWITNESS TOP 10 TRAVEL GUIDE)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The "Top 10" series is great for travelers. We recently used them in Hong Kong and Beijing. The guides get right to the point! Unfortunately, the Top 10 San Antonio and Austin covers mostly San Antonio. If interested in Austin, this is not the book to buy.

I am a fan of the Top 10 series -- a series that has provided me with a quick overview of destinations around the world and a check list of things to remember while visiting an area. I purchased this to help with planning a trip to Austin, TX with the knowledge that its typical brevity would also be its strength. This book, however, failed in even that use. The book contains a 6-page section on Austin and annoyingly, lists the Top 10 things to see around Texas, forgetting to identify in which City the sites are located, leaving you searching map coordinates to find out whether the suggested Top 10 site is in San Antonio, Austin, the Hill Country or Corpus Christi. You can make this book work as an overview of the area, but why do so when you can find more detail and a better "index" in virtually any other book on Austin. I'd pass on this one.

As others have said (and I should have read), this book is useless if you are going to Austin. There is basically zero Austin information in this book. The title is misleading. It should be called "top 10 San Antonio". I bought it and returned it.

Whoever came up with the structure and flow of this book did not have the reader in mind. Not only is this guide mostly about San Antonio (so far, so good), the strange mix with Austin makes this book hard to read and even harder to use. You never know where you really are. If you travel to San Antonio, this Eyewitness Guide is helpful, no doubt. You find a lot of info. Don't bother exploring Austin, though, while relying on this book. A typical case of "less would be more" - strip out Austin in the next edition of this book, and everybody will be better off.

I recently moved to San Antonio and wanted to know some of the ins and outs. This is a great resource with detailed maps. I also usually look up additional information via internet, but all in all I have been very happy with this book.

This guide was a great help to us on our recent visit (in January 2011). We had never been to San Antonio before and were interested in sights outside the Riverwalk area. The information about the Art Museum, the Missions south of town and the King William district was very good. The guide also helped us change hotels. After the first one proved to be unsuitable in many ways, we used the guide to find a better hotel and moved there after the first night. The guide's recommendation of the new hotel was accurate and helped us have a very pleasant stay.

My wife and I enjoyed seven days in Austin, San Antonio and the Hill Country this fall, and we found the 2009 edition of this a very good overview of the points of interest. We didn't compare the 2007 version with the one we used; the 2009 version has a picture of the Alamo and a white top on the cover. DK notes that there are revisions in the 2009 edition without identifying them further. The ISBN for the 2009 edition is ISBN 9780756645809; searching Amazon on that number will return the 2009 edition.

This guide has a heavy focus on San Antonio, with about 70% of the entries, perhaps 15% on Austin and the balance on the Hill Country. Nancy Mikula did a good job of picking the top tourist sites based on conversations with friends and family who live in the area -- San Antonio is by far the leading tourist attraction in Texas, but Mikula did a very good job of picking interesting sites in Austin and Fredricksburg.

The inset maps are small, but Texas highways and most streets are well marked so the size didn't really detract from the usability of the book. In addition, there is an excellent large scale map in the cover pocket which served very well.

We use Mikula's Top 10 Santa Fe (EYEWITNESS TOP 10 TRAVEL GUIDE), a town we know very well, liked it very much, and recommend it to friends who visit us there. This overview guide is equally good for San Antonio in particular.

One general comment on the Top 10 series: I would like to see a short section devoted to other resources, particularly books on the area. Mikula does a good job of describing free sources of maps on the internet, from magazines and from the tourist bureaus. But, as a starting point for exploring an area in more depth, a list of some excellent books would be helpful. Here's a short list of my favorites:

Insiders' Guide to San Antonio, 4th (Insiders' Guide Series) -- essays by local residents.

In a Narrow Grave : Essays on Texas -- cultural insights by Larry McMurty.

Texas, a Modern History -- a brief overview from a respected historian.

All in all, the 2009 edition of this book was a very helpful guide for a week long trip to the area.

Robert C. Ross 2009

This guide was very helpful when we went back to San Antonio 13 years after our previous trip to the Alamo. We particularly liked its pocket size: easy to carry around, with good maps. Very handy when on the road.

My wife and I travel a lot and this book is one of the better ones out there. It sure isn't detailed, but it's to the point of you're planing to stay only couple of days or so and see the major stuff.

I love this book! I recently went to San Antonio for a long weekend and this was the perfect book! Some may not like the condense top ten format but I love it! It's great when you have a short amount of time and want to see the highlights of an area. Small, light, and compact, this was great to keep in my purse, even small enough to put in a guy's back pocket. Beautiful color pictures and exerpts, detailed street map, and organized by different genre's. Great Buy!