Customer Reviews

Eyewitness Travel Guide to Spain

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I studied in Madrid for 2 months this summer and lived with 4 other girls that I met through the university. Needless to say we all managed to have different tour books. But this one was best of all. Everyone always wanted to borrow mine because it has great pictures and helpful info like metro stops. I took it everywhere. When we all started packing to go home, no one could fit their tour books and they gladly left them behind. But not me! I'm holding on to this one!

Just got back from Spain where I put this guide to the test in several cities. I decided to try this instead of the usual guides I used in the past (Let's Go, Rick Steve's, Lonely Planet, Fodor's, etc.). My overall verdict is that this book is good for a certain type of traveler on a certain type of trip, but can't be leaned on too heavily as a reference guide. It handles a few things better than other guides, but doesn't have enough information for the budget travelers dependent on their guidebooks to make it from place to place.

What it does better than other guides is provide beautiful color photographs and cutaway diagrams of major sights, like cathedrals and museums and select neighborhood in major cities. Unlike other guidebooks, the photos are presented on thick glossy paper, providing extremely vivid coloring. I leaned heavily on the city-map of Madrid to find my way to the right metro stations for all the sites. Each chapter on a town had a fairly good list of sites to see along with operating hours, and each one was keyed to a map so I could easily navigate to the site. The subway map of Madrid inside the back cover was super useful. It has a list of restaurants and hotels for various cities all in two color-coded appendixes at the back of the book, and the price ranges listed are wider than other guidebooks like Let's Go or Rick Steve's, which focus on hostels and budget hotels. You'll find five star hotels and "jacket and tie required" restaurants in the Eyewitness Guide.

But many travelers will find the book problematic. First, it has very little information on how to get from one destination to another. Rick Steve's and Let's Go, which my travel companions brought, were much better on this front. Those two books saved me countless trips to tourist offices and train/bus stations and were worth buying for that reason alone. The Eyewitness guide just have had general travel info as an appendix in the back of the book, but very little on travel from one particular town to another. Not a problem if your travel plans were made out all in advance, but a fatal flaw if you're figuring it out as you go.

A few other problems: the high quality paper means the books is much heavier than other guidebooks. Walking around in the heat, I didn't appreciate having to lug it in my backpack. Also, the restaurant and hotel listings are pretty skimpy--just two pages of restaurants and hotels for Madrid?! Other guidebooks are more complete--Eyewitness tends to focus on a few restaurants and hotels across a broad price range, though I have no idea how those particular ones were selected.

In summary, I think this guidebook works great if you have all your travel between towns and lodging in each destination set ahead of time. This guidebook will help you pick out a few sites to visit in each area and provide great photos for each. For the budget traveler/backpacker who needs to figure out how to get from one town to the next on the fly, Let's Go or Rick Steve's or a book like that is essential. Next time I travel, I'm buying Let's Go before the trip, and if I'm in a particular town for a while, I might pick up an Eyewitness Guide once I'm in town and then toss it out once I leave. Or perhaps buy one at home and tear out the relevant pages to bring along. They make Eyewitness Guides for particular destinations, like Madrid only, which might be a better value than the entire Spain guide if you're only hitting a few spots.

This book is wonderful and visually exciting! Its color pictures, maps and legends to historical sites make it a "must have" for travel to Spain, but what is even more exciting is the timeline detailing the country's history, from being part of the Roman Empire to Moorish influence, right up to present day. Among the myriad of covered topics, there are souvenir and shopping recommendations, information on medical care, a calender of festivals, and even a weather guide. The indespensible information and the sheer beauty of the book make it a real page turner. You're not bogged down by too long explanations or endless rambling. It whets your appetite for the culture and doesn't let you down. Going to Spain? Don't go without this book.

During a recent trip to Spain with four friends, all with different travel books, we decided that this is a must-have for travel. While I wouldn't rely on this as your sole travel book, I found it worked well with another guide such as Lonely Planet. The pictures were very helpful (if you have limited time and want to figure out what to see), as was the easy access metro maps. However, the restaurant guides and hotel listings were a bit limited as were some of the maps.

This eyewitness book is great. The city and attraction 3-d maps are wonderful. MAKE SURE TO CHECK THE PUBLISHING DATE before purchasing. Although this appears to be the most recent edition, it is not. Check to make sure you have the copy with the latest 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 revisions. Overall, even though a little out dated, a wonderful book.

My husband and I took a 15-day tour of Barcelona and Andalucia this summer and although we had no guide or anything, we found it was very enjoyable to go around places using this particular guide. Great photos, modern layout and trustworthy suggestions as regards restaurants and hotels. The city maps were a bit confusing, esp. in places like Jewish quarters but we found our way out quite easily. Loved the food pictures - very enlightening!!!

My wife is from Spain and I have spend lots of time there. I have many guide books, but when I saw this book, I knew I needed it. It has very good discussions on history, art, food, etc. The maps and cut-away diagrams are very good and informative. It not only gives info on the main cities but also points out many of the out-of-the-way places that really add to a visit to Spain.

As a Canadian living in Switzerland, I find myself travelling all over Europe and I always buy the Eyewitness Travel Guides! They are the bests travel Guides available. The one on Spain is very complete...even the smallest villages are included! GREAT GUIDE!

I purchased this book when I knew I was taking a trip to Spain but I was trying to find a way to decide between Madrid and Barcelona. I found all the information extremely useful. Eventually we decided to go to Barcelona and took the guide along since it seemed as though we would refer to it often.

This book had a section devoted to Barcelona and separate areas devoted to the hotels and restaurants. I particularily liked the fact that they devoted a whole 2 page spread to a particular site to see with close up photos and some detailed explanations. After visitng a few of the sites, I came back to the hotel room and re-read the description and it gave me a greater appreciation for what I had seen. Also, the hand drawn 3D maps were very useful for me as a very visual person because they helped me gain a greater sense of direction. The descriptions of the various points of interest were very helpful and contained a lot of information along with street address, phone number and hours of operation. At the end of the section were a few maps which were also very simple and had various important landmarks throughout.

Walking down the stretch of road in Barcelona known as La Rambla, you would see many newspaper stands and they always had Eyewitness guidebooks to sell as well. Also, I saw many tourists carrying this book as their guide in many different languages. Since this book was all about all of Spain, I would probably recommend picking up the specific Barcelona and Catalonia edition if you are interested in visiting the particular area. But all in all I really enjoyed this book. It was definately stronger in the attractions and things to see area and a bit weaker with hotel and restaurant recommendations.

A family member gave me the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Spain as a bon voyage gift, and it has proved an essential guide on what to see, do, and eat in Spain. As someone who will be spending a bit of time in northern Spain (four months), the Eyewitness Guide has proved invaluable on excursions to nearby cities (including Madrid). Since Spain is full of thousands of monuments, churches and cathedrals, bullrings (for those who, like me, oppose the inherent cruelty of bullfights and animal abuse in Spain, one can always appreciate the architecture of famous bullrings), museums, palaces, monasteries and other places of interest, the Eyewitness Guide gives you the best of the best, with brief synopses, maps and must-sees in museums, street maps, photos, historical backgrounds and more.

I especially appreciated the features for each region, such as wildlife, wines, and regional food specialties. I plan to visit many different cities and regions while I am in Spain, and now I have ideas on what I want to spend my time on. There is also a handy survival guide including phoning in Spain, police, shopping suggestions, size charts for clothing and shoes and monetary conversions between Euros and pesetas.

I found this book most useful in conjunction with the "Let's Go: Spain, Portugal and Morocco" guide that was given to me by a friend before I left. My only grudge with the Eyewitness guide is its lack of lodging information--there are few hotels (and no hostels) listed, even though there are upwards of twenty in my town (Burgos). The "Let's Go" guide is more useful for (cheap) lodging information, and the hostel I stayed at in Madrid (Hostal Aguilar, Calle San Jeronimo 32, second floor) was an unbeatable bargain, as well as spotlessly clean with a private bath and centrally located. If I had used the Eyewitness guide I would have easily spent much more. Also, there are no maps for smaller cities, something which the "Let's Go" guide provides. But finding maps in Spanish towns is generally not difficult as there are tourism offices in nearly every town that provide maps free of charge.

Overall, the Eyewitness guide is well worth the price, and the colourful photos, excellent research and interesting side notes make exploring Spain a pleasure. Extremely useful for the traveller or for those who are working and living in Spain.