Customer Reviews

California (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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I am never the type of hard working traveller who would dig into lengthy travel books to find out everything. I found this book very useful for me. It's all in color (so, it's a pleasure to read, though that makes it heavy), and it has great maps which highlights all attractions in addition to detailed maps in the end of the book. That keeps me focus on what I want in a very easy way, instead of searching for where that particular attraction is.

I went to San Francisco, and places as far as 3 hours driving to north, and 4 hours driving to south. For San Francisco part, this book even included different architecture style, which greatly enhanced my experience. As for others, most of the places they describe, they include pictures also. This helps me to know what to expect.

Though I don't like it to be so heavy, it's my favorite among my collection.

I like Eyewitness travel guides, even if I usually complement them with other, more "wordy" ones. This one, like all the other ones I own, is a good, relatively short (but heavy!) guide very helpful to give you good hints about what to see over an area as large as California. The nice pictures are always a big plus.

On the minus side, you will find only a few words about 95% of the locations described in this guide, so if you are looking for something deeper, of if you like historical anecdotes about the places you visit, this guide is not ideal. Another minus is the relatively scant number of hotels and restaurants listed in the guide, surely a result of the large area covered. Also, the information you are given on restaurants is almost invariably composed of 20 words or so. So, if good food is important on your trips, this guide is again not ideal. From the perspective of both real content and good food advice, I think the "Moon" handbooks are vastly superior to the Eyewitness guides. However, the few and B&W pictures in the Moon series will sometimes make even great places sound or look dull.

Again on the plus side, the maps are useful.

Overall, this a good guide to use as a starting point to plan a trip, but if you really care about what you see, you will probably have to buy other material too, and I would suggest looking for a Moon guide to have an ideal combination.

This is a good quality, comprehensive travel guide that not only has concise street guides, photos and a variety of places to see in cities up and down California, it also includes historical information, places to eat, stay and shop. I highly recommend it.

I am a geographer, and I have to say that this is by far one of the best travel guides that I have or seen. It is well written, easy to use, and packed with nice illustrations and descriptions. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something like this.

Visiting California with one book is no easy task but Eyewitness does a very good job of creating a book that can be used easily. With so much to do the regionalization of California in this book is one of its most useful aspects. Although I wish they would break it into northern and southern California if you are going to be visiting the state this is a great place to start looking.