Customer Reviews

Fodor's European Ports of Call, 1st Edition (Travel Guide)

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

 

 

I deleted my earlier review where I gave this book 3 stars. The reason why I changed my mind and decided to give this book 5 stars was because as I started to plan my shore excursions for my upcoming European cruise, I realized how helpful...no, make that VALUABLE... this book was. This book became an integral part of my planning and I saved a lot of money by making my own plans and not have to rely on the cruiseline. I especially appreciated the info on the unfamiliar ports and how far they were to the major cities by transportation. I mean, really, I've never heard of Livorno! Where on earth was Malaga? (Livorno is a port in Italy to go to Florence/Pisa and Malaga is a port in Spain to go to Granada.) One of the reason why I initially did not liked the book was because the chapters were sorted in an alphabetical order; thus, if I have several ports in one country, I have to flip back and forth. I resolved this problem by buying colored tabs and I assigned each country a color code (i.e. green tab for Spain, blue tab for Italy, orange for France, etc, etc.) This solved my irritation and now I am happy with the book. This book will give you glimps of ports of call with maps and insights. Highly recommended if you are going on European cruise and have never been there before.

We are a group of travel friends who took a cruise from Istanbul to Venice with stops in Greece, Italy, Montenegro, etc. Shore excursions are very pricey on ships - this book save us a huge pot of money since it was clear a number of our ports were small walled cities in which we could wander with the guidebook. We did take tours in Athens because of time constraints and its size but the rest was easy to follow. Highly recommended.

I bought this book to help plan my excursions for a Mediterranean cruise my wife and I will be taking. If you plan to do the cruise liner's expensive tours, then you will find this book contains all the helpful info you need. But if like us, you are heavy on adventure (and perhaps a little light on cash) and you plan to take the do-it-yourself approach, then you will need much more info. In that case, you should turn to the internet. If you love to have the info in book form, then Rick Steve's books are a better choice (although you may need 5 or 6 of them as opposed to one).

This book is good for helping you decide which sights to see. But if you plan to do it on your own, you'll need to know where the train station is and how to get there. Websites like tripadvisor, portreviews and cruisecritic are great, as are the Rick Steve's books and website.

Gave use everything we needed in excellent detail. Covers excursions, has maps and details of many cities large and small.

This book is pretty useless. It doesn't even give the most basic information that you want to know when you're on a cruise...where do the ships dock and how do you get to where you want to go from there? You'd be better off doing your own research on line or waiting until you're on board and getting the information from your cruise line.

This book is perfect for those who a are avid cruisers. It's much easier to just have this one book than to have to carry multiple guide books for each location. It gives enough information for each port of call so that we know what the highlights are, but not so much that we're overwhelmed. There is probably only about 1-2 days worth of sites mentioned for each port, but this is enough when you only have a day at port or have the rare overnight at a particular location.

I give this a 5 star because the book gives you detail information for where the cruise ship docks and the many sites you can visit. However, you can probably find a wealth of information from all the ports if you do an internet search.