Customer Reviews

DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Great Britain

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more!

The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes.

But, the really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list.

Summary Negative:

The country books are too general to really satisfy all your needs in any given location. So, if your entire trip is spent in Wessex, for example, you will also want to get the specific guide for that city (but, the London Section is fairly good)

Guide Specifics:

The guides are organized as follows:

How to use this guide
Introduction to Great Britain
............Portrait of Great Britain
............History of Great Britain
............Great Britain Through the Year
London, Area by Area
Great Britain by Region
............Southeast England
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............West Country
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Midlands
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............North Country
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Wales
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Scotland
........................Specific Cities / Towns
Travelers Needs
............Hotels
............Restaurants
............Shopping
Survival Information
............Practical Info.
........................Police, safety, buses, trains, etc.
............Travel Info.
........................Maps, tours, currency, etc.
............General Index
............Phrase Book

Discussion:
The book begins with "A Portrait of Great Britain", including a complete map, a review of Great Britain, it's history, and Great Britain's History (very interesting), and Great Britain though the Year - including events, etc.,

Region with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of Cities / Towns, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.

Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly.

The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on resorts, hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions

The books are so well thought out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages.

Negative:
The country-wide guides are by definition more general than the specific city guides. So, if you are going to Scotland, get the specific "Scotland" guide (another great guide). If you decide to get the "Great Britain" guide for your 3, or 4 city tour of England, understand that this guide may be a little to general for all your local travel needs.

Conclusion:
As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location.

I've spent a year in England and have made >30 visits all together.[...]

Eyewitness Travel Guides
Eyewitness is appropriately named as each book provides spectacular 3d aerial angled views of the primary tourists sections. The accompanying information has the full color photos everyone seems to want but what is great about these guides is that they do a fairly good job of providing details about sites, odd stories to perk your interest, and little known things to give you a decent background. The history timelines are visually interesting and do a lot for American perspectives as it helps us a lot to see the full spread of the centuries in order to understand where the sites we are seeing fit into the multi-millenneal scope of things. These are justifiably the best selling travel books for Americans.

[...]

When I bought this book at a local bookstore to prepare for an upcoming trip to Great Britain -- it looked like the perfect book. Nice bright glossy photos made it interesting to flip though, and get good ideas of where and what to see.

However, I'm now in the planning stages of my trip and find the book is falling short. It is organized by MAJOR area, but the smaller areas aren't labelled well and are hard to find. And then, for the most part, both restaurants and hotels AREN'T in the section that covers a small area, they are jammed in the back like an afterthought. This means if you are planning to stay in one area, you cant look to see where to stay without flipping to the back. There are simple 1/2 line descriptions, with an address/phone number, and a ballpark price. Outside of looking at price, there is very little indication that says, "hey this is a luxury hotel" or "that hotel is overpriced" or "watch out, there is no air conditioning in that hotel"

The book does have nice pictures which is important, I find myself saying, "Hey, Id like to go to see that!" So for getting ideas on where to visit, it's good. It also has some helpful travel advice on what to do and what to pack, etc It includes pictures of local food, which is good so you know what you might run into.

Although I'll probably bring this book with me on vacation, there simply isn't enough information to decide where to stay and where to eat -- and the information that IS there isn't organzied properly.

I used a Frommer's guide last year for London and for Ireland, and it was incredibly helpful for planning that trip. I recently bought a Frommer's England 2000 guide which is organized much better -- but only covers England so I'll have to buy Frommer's Scotland 2000 too -- but I'll have the information I need.

There is enormous coverage in this book. Maybe that is its main drawback. There is just so MUCH to Great Britain, that it is impossible to go into great depth. HOWEVER, what it does it does extremely well.

The house style of the Eyewitness guides is very attractive - beautiful pictures, cutaways and good maps.

It is not the sort of guide that is very comprehensive in restaurant and hotel suggestions - but in the UK there is such a good network of tourist offices that you rarely need a huge accommodation listings book. Each tourist office will book accommodation in any price range or category.

I wrote a rave review of the London guide. I suggest if you are spending an extensive time in London, it is worthwhile buying that book instead. And if you are spending significant time in Scotland, consider that book.

This book lives up to its slogan: it shows you what the others only tell you. The pictures are beautiful and the maps are excellent--much larger than you would usually find in other guidebooks.The guidebook also covers British history, food and money. Because of the amount of illustrations and pictures, however, it would not be the only guide I would buy if traveling to Britain. I would recommend this book as a complement to other guidebooks from which you could get more detailed info on lodging and prices.

Covering every imaginable spot of interest in Great Britain and packed with maps and color pictures, this is a travel guide you could enjoy just reading like a novel. The attractive layout and photos of locations and attractions really help you decide what to include in your itinerary. Color diagrams of museums, castles and sightseeing districts makes you feel more in control and less lost. With this guide and a car, we traveled for a month and were never disappointed.

This book features fantastic photos in high gloss and some great bits of information. But if you're looking for a travel guide with hotels and restaurants and practical information, stick to the Let's Go guide or the Lonely Planet guide or Rough Guide. All in all it's a beautiful book.

I wasn't sure if I really liked this book when I first got it, but after reading many other London travel guides, I could find none better than this one. It has become my Bible and will accompany me every step of my trip. One suggestion for the publisher: I would have given the book five stars if a pull-out map of all of London was included!

I've used some of the Eyewitness Travel Guides on a trip around Europe, they were so useful that when I came home I've bought some more. They are more than travel guides, they are also a souvenir. I totally recommend them. Great pictures, great 3D street maps with suggested routes, great explanations.

My work has provided me with the opportunity to travel a good bit. I am the type of person who wants to get a working background for my destinations, both in terms of history and geographic layout. Because I work, I don't have a great deal of time to spend reading and studying different, often lengthy, travel guides before or during my trips.

Because these guides are concise, beautifully illustrated, relatively compact, and impeccably organized, I cannot recommend highly enough the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides! The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide is THE guide I buy for every destination. Not only do I get a quick history and background of the destination, but I also will be provided with a visual guide to everything. The visual detail is really what sets the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides apart.

The street maps of common destination points are drawn in dimensional detail so you will visually recognize when you "get there." The regional maps are colorful and concise. And the drawings associated with attractions like museums allow the traveler who is short on time to quickly see the best of the museum within the time the traveler has to spend.

Each DK Eyewitness Travel Guide has a good summary section in the back with practical information about where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, and how to get around.

While I may supplement the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide with others for a more detailed travel guide, the other guide is only more to read, not more to see. Buy the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide first for any destination.