Customer Reviews

Frommer's Toronto 2010 (Frommer's Complete Guides)

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I have used this guide recently on my first trip to Toronto. While it has the standard contents: Where to Stay, Where to Dine, What to See & Do, City Strolls, Shopping, After Dark and Side Trips, I couldn't help feel a little disappointed with the guide.

It is 2-color (red and black) throughout, with the exception of the covers, inside covers, and the first 14 pages. These contain the only photos, and I didn't find that very helpful when looking through the book for ideas of things to do. Sometimes you just need a stunning photo next to a description to get you interested.

I also wasn't keen on the lack of cross-referencing of suggested items to the maps. For example, if I am reading about Casa Loma and I'm interested, I would like a reference to a grid map so that I can see how easy it is to get to from my hotel. It gives an address, sure, but with the whole of Toronto to search, it can be tricky. The flip side of this is that some of the sections are by area (midtown, downtown east etc) that come with a map somewhere close by in the guide. I'll add to this that in the photo descriptions at the beginning it would have been nice to be directed to the appropriate page number to make it user friendly.

My last whinge is about some lack of detail. There are precisely 8 lines that cover both the buses and streetcars, with no information provided about how to buy tickets, costs, or route maps.

The guide seems fairly up-to-date as far as I could tell, and the pull-out (color!) map is useful if you don't want to carry the whole guide around with you.

So the guide's not bad, but could be improved to make it easier to navigate for the reader.

Granted, there is some good information in this book. However, compared to other popular guides to Toronto I found it very wanting. The listings are limited. Other general guides include a much greater number of listings in each category -- places to stay, things to see, restaurants, etc. I found the organization a bit confusing having to flip around a lot. The maps are, by themselves, good but there are separate maps for each subject so if you want to find restaurants close to your hotel or to a site you are visiting you have to flip among maps -- very annoying!

And who designed this book? It is printed in a rather small, san serif font. Anyone with a passing knowledge of publishing knows that in printed text serif fonts -- such as the popular Times family -- are much easier to read (there is some debate about reading text on computer screens but not about text printed on paper). I found this book difficult to read because of the font selection and the small font size and I was sitting at my desk under good lighting. I'd hate to try to use this as a guidebook when I'm out walking around the city or sitting in a dimly lighted restaurant.