Customer Reviews

Frommer's Barcelona, Madrid & Seville, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

Not wanting to lug around a tome covering all of Spain, and not wanting to purchase separate city guides for each of the places I intended to visit, I found this book to be a great compromise (since it covered three of the places I intended to visit). The book gives detailed critical reviews of hotels and restaurants, and points you to the most important sites in each area (with one walking tour of each and detailed information about various sites). This is a great book if you're planning to spend 1-3 days in one or more of these areas. It even gives travel information for places to visit surrounding each area (for example, offering a guide to Toledo, near Madrid). Overall, I was very pleased, especially considering the reasonable price. One warning, however, is that some of the maps (and the placement of items on those maps) are inaccurate.

Frommer's is an excellent guidebook (though I personally like Lonely Planet and DK, Frommer's is a solid 3). Some of the reviews I read have been negative, and it seems to be somewhat misplaced towards the guidebook.

I can understand that not finding a laundry is frustrating. But if that is your only gripe with it, why not leave it at that? It seems to me that any problems you may have with rude hosts is more of a personailty clash than anything a guidebook could help with.

Honestly, although not perfect, we found this book a more than adequate starting point for our Spanish adventure. My advice: Rate the book on it's own merits, and your vacation on your planning. The two should stay seperate.

All in all, I believe that this book, along with DK's line of books, are a good pick for info on a trip to these beautiful cities.

While traveling through Europe, my husband and I decided to visit Barcelona. Since it was the only country we had not researched before we left, we decided we better pick up Frommer's guide. To our dismay, most of the information in it was inaccurate or misinforming. For example, the street the laundry was listed on was misspelled. When we finally found it (in the pouring rain) it was a laundry service, not self-serve. So there was 2 hours of "dead time" not to mention paying 3 times as much money for getting our clothes cleaned.

The silver lining I guess was that the laundry lady was one of the 3 nice Spanish people we met during our 6 day visit. I wish that Frommer's would have given us some forewarning on Spanish culture and rudeness. Even the service people in our 4 star hotel were grumpy. Everyone seems to need either a fiesta or a siesta.

On our final night in Barcelona, we counted our change and had just enough money to catch the metro and attend a Spanish dance. Upon our arrival (late because the directions were fuzzy) we found that both the time and the amount listed were incorrect. We then found out that the metro closes down earlier than the book states, so we got to spend our last pasettas on a cab ride back to our hotel. When I got back I was so aggravated that I could have started a bonfire with it.

There were several other ommissions and inaccuracies that we ran across but all in all my final straw was when I contacted Frommers online for a refund and read that they do not offer refunds--I needed to contact the point of purchase. No wonder it was the only English guide book left in Germany-nobody wanted it!

I learned a lot of things from our European excursion. One of the best I can tell you is use Lonely Planet guides! And visit the information station at the airport-they may not be friendly but at least their brochures are helpful!