Customer Reviews

Eyewitness Travel Guide to Amsterdam

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When we went to Amsterdam last May, we had no idea what we were going to see. Because we tend to plan our itineraries in advance, it was important that we get some idea of which tourist sights were worth seeing. The DK Eyewitness guides are great for this purpose: They are lavishly illustrated, with colorful maps, schematics, and -- above all -- photographs of tourist destinations in and around Amsterdam.

I would NOT, however, recommend that you take this guide with you. It weights 1 pound 3 oz; and we always travel light. So what we recommend is to do your Stateside planning with the DK guide and use a lighter one to accompany you on your travels. It's a pity, because the transportation and street maps alone are worth the price of the guide.

A major plus for us is that we chose to visit the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen partly because it looked interesting in the book; and it turned out to be by far our favorite stop.

Like other DK guides, this one has an excellent "Practical Information" section on currency, banking, telephoning, and public transportation. It also have colorful pictures of the type of food you might encounter in Amsterdam's restaurants. (And do try the raw new herring with onions and pickles: If you're a sushi-head like me, you will be in heaven.)

Where I would not use this guide is for names of specific hotels and restaurants. The information on these is presented in tabular format and leaves off many interesting sidelights that would be important for us as travellers, such as roominess, charm, family ownership, and other intangibles.

It's well worth the somewhat steep price to buy this book if you're planning a trip to the Netherlands.

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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.

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.

Specifics:

The guides are organized as follows:

How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
............Introducing Amsterdam
........................Amsterdam on the Map
........................History of Amsterdam
........................Amsterdam at a Glance
........................Through the Year (events, holidays)
............Amsterdam Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings
........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.

Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, bars, cafes
............Shops / Markets
............Entertainment

Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.

............Travel Information
........................Planes, trains and automobiles, signs
............Street Maps
............General Index
............Phrase Book

Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Amsterdam", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Amsterdam through the Year - including events, etc.

For the specific areas it provides an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or sections, 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 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.

Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. 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. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.

This Amsterdam guide was given to me as a gift by my Opera-Singing buddy for my trip to Amsterdam for the Millenium, and I thanked him heartily upon my return, hugging and clapping his back. This guide has an enormous amout of information, pictures, maps, lists, graphics, detailed street-walks and ratings, all wrapped up in a durable, very easy to use, SMALL, portable package. I threw it in my back pocket when we were walking the streets, pulling it out periodically to check if we were going the right direction. Convenient, easy to understand, indespensable.

I have used Eyewitness Travel Guides every time I've travelled outside of the US. They're amazing! Beautiful pictures, excellent information, great history...don't leave home without it! It's well worth the $20!

After reading some reviews, I bought two guides (just in case), since DK Eyewitness Guide was labled as "expensive". But I wound up using only DK Guide. It has everything you need. The information is easily accessible. The maps are great. Just perfect for a quick reference. You'll find yourself refering to it again and again while walking the streets of Amsterdam (I just couldn't deal with reading long pages of information (probably very useful) in Frommer's Guide).

The selection of restaurans was great. Every restaurant rated in this book that we went to was a hit.

This DK book has an incredible foldout architectural walk of Amsterdam. Only DK could have conceived of such an innovative way of presenting this walk.

I found this to be one of the best books on the market. If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to get around the city this book is a must. I do quite a lot of traveling in Europe and always pick up a "Eyewitness Travel Guide" since they have more in depth history, plenty of pictures, and take you on guided walks throughout the city. You are provided with lists to the museums, restaurants to suit all tastes, and hotels ranging for tight budgets to high class. I would recommend this book to everyone. Have a great trip!

Amsterdam is an exquisite city and the D-K Eyewitness guide is the only one that does it justice. If you are on a time limit in the city, you can plan what you want to see and do down to the exact floor of a museum or historic site. This is a gem.

DK Travel Guide is the best travel guide you can find in any bookstore. This Amsterdam guide is especially outstanding in view of the contents, illustrations and photos compare to the other series like Paris or Rome.

This is the first time we have used an Eyewitness Guide and were pleased with the information, maps and suggested walking tours. The book is quite detailed and opinionated about hotels.