Customer Reviews

Blue Guide Prague

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Having just returned, I can confirm that almost all one needs to appreciate Prague is this Blue Guide. Everything is covered in an accessible but intelligent way: the practicalities of transportation (warning: the Metro fare system is confusing!), food, money, and language basics, along with the historical and architectural information you will need to enhance your trip. Make this your airplane or train reading--you won't be bored!--and, despite any fatigue or jet lag, you will arrive anxious to wander. Logical walking tours of areas of interest are clearly set out in the Guide, with clear walking instuctions and local maps. You will especially appreciate this detail while touring the Castle. Like all the Blue Guides, there is little you would want to know about anything you see which is not covered. Since you will be walking on cobblestones, and spending a lot less on food that you would ever expect in a tourist area, I urge you to spend the anticipated savings on a good pair of walking shoes. This book and those shoes will greatly enhance your trip.

In theory, this would be a great travel guide -- it goes into far greater detail than other guides about the sights and their historic importance. However, in pratice, this guide is very difficult to use. The entire guide is written in narrative form, as if you were following a walk. Unfortunately, the walks are irritatingly not indicated on a map, so they're difficult to follow or visualize. Moreover, the guide constantly uses compass directions in its descriptions -- difficult enough to follow outdoors when the guide directs you down meandering paths, and downright useless when it describes building interiors in the same way. Who can tell from the darkness inside of a building which is the northwest archway?

The guide also suffers from poor design. Maps are haphazardly scattered throughout the book (instead of logically collected at the beginning or end). The list of phrases is painfully set flush, with the Czech first (instead of as two easily scannable columns), making it difficult to search by English expression.

The guide also assumes that art and architecture are your main focus, and even then, the walks often lead you to fairly mundane buildings. The lack of editorial opinion makes it difficult to determine which sights are worth seeing and which aren't. Note that entertainment (not even music, theater, or opera) is not covered at all.

This guide is for you only if other guides do not provide enough art and architecture background to you, and you are able to read a travel guide in its entirety before your visit, or you are willing to carry this book with you at all times and follow its walks to a T. Otherwise, you'll be much happier with the always reliable Lonely Planet or Rough Guides, or if you must, Fodor's or Frommer's.

This is a great guide if you're dying to find every last cornice, pediment and pillaster in Prague. If you're a Phillistine like me and find yourself confusing Art Noveau with Rococo--hell, if you even have to ask what "Art Noveau" is, then forget about it. It's chock-a-block with forgettable details about who refurbished which castle in every century since its "execution," a word the author will accept no synonyms for.

There's also a snide, underlying anti-Americanism which Americans like me might find superfluous, if not downright bothersome. Why describe Prague's touristiness as the result of "Americanisation," as if the US held a stranglehold on neon, chintzy souvenirs and aggressive marketing? Why include the Big Ben bookstore on one of the walks, yet play down the American-oriented Globe, which also features a cafe, restaurant and Internet access, as a relic of the era when American expats thought Prague was the coolest thing around? Forgive my paraphrasing: it doesn't do justice to the dripping condescension with which the author dismisses the store, which I found more than amenable.

The walks are hard to follow and take forever. The maps are poorly labelled and difficult to use unless one follows the walks in virtual lockstep. I can see the benefit of walks being laid out in this manner, but the guide should offer other options as well.

One last note which I hope makes its way to the author: George Eliot, whom he quotes at length, was a WOMAN, and should thus not have been referred to with the pronoun "he." Let's hope this makes it into the third edition.