Customer Reviews

Frommer's Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine

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Frommer's guidebook provides an excellent overview of the sights to see, things to do, and places to stay in the three Northern New England states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The overviews are very accurate and provide a good description of the places, making the book an excellent way to decide where to go in the areas, and a good guidebook once you arrive.

The biggest problem with the book is that there is not enough individual descriptions of each area. Chances are most tourists are not visiting several regions in all three states, but are choosing one or two to explore in-depth. For example, I went to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park in Maine, an area that was given around 20 pages of coverage. Therefore, more research on the specific areas you plan to visit will probably be necessary to help you get the absolute most out of your trip!

I took this guide, 2008 8th Edition ( note the other reviews for this guide are very dated), along with Fodor's New England 2007, on a 10-day tour through New Hampshire & Maine. NORMANLLY, Frommer's does a very good job of guiding you to best that either a country (or state) has to offer. NOT this guide. This guide is seriously disappointing.

Yes, the guide does cover the tourist site, and like all of the major guides (Fodor's, Footprint, Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, Moon) it will point you to the "must see" places. Also, to be fair, WHEN it does list a restaurant or hotel the guide does a fairly decent job describing the place. BUT, what really set guides apart are the quality and quantity of their accommodation and restaurant recommendations. These recommendations, along with the author's writing style and the interesting sidebars filled with tidbits (this guide has none) make or break a guide.

Frommer's is dismal when it comes to restaurant recommendations. Dismal. For example, New Hampshire's largest city, and the largest city of northern New England, Manchester, has only two (2) restaurant recommendations. Two! It has one (1) accommodation listing. For New Hampshire's State Capital, Concord, there is one (1) restaurant recommendation and it is vegetarian!

Skip to Maine and if you look for restaurants or accommodations in the city of Bangor you won't find any listed. IN FACT Bangor (Maine's third-largest city) is not even mentioned! HELLO. Who in the heck is editing this guide?

I could go on about the pathetic maps, lack of statistics (population, altitude etc.) but really, save your money and get either Lonely Planet New England 2008 or Fodor's New England 2007 (strongly recommended). This guide is not recommended.

We bought this book for a summer trip to Vermont with our family with kids and found the guide not very helpful for finding things to do or places to eat in Vermont. It is more geared towards ski season.

I'm the editor of the latest edition of Frommer's Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine (the seventh edition!) and I love finding out about the latest that's going on in Northern New England. The author, Paul Karr, gives both specifics and a big-picture perspective of these three states that reflects both their history and how they might change (and what will surely stay the same) in the 21st century.

Paul starts it out with the Best of New England, from the classic resorts, to alternative and moderately priced accommodations, B&Bs, and the amazing variety of food & drink: from fine-dining in destination restaurants (I had one of the finest meals of my life at Primo in Rockland, ME (p. 327), which gets three stars from Paul), to the classic New England diner, like the Blue Benn, in Bennington, VT (p. 90).

It's the In-Depth chapter that gives me the measure of the region, starting with an overview of its mountains, forests and coastline (well, except Vermont's!). He gives a history of the place(s) from when and why people first settled there, and what they did, and how it changed after the Revolutionary War, and how industry came (and went), and how the various growth spurts and economic downturns of the U.S. affected the people and the landscape.

Talking about the land itself, there's a helpful guide to the flora and fauna of the region (p. 25). I haven't seen a bear or a moose in the wild (yet!), but we have been whale-watching, and we even got up close and personal with a Harris hawk in a falconry lesson at the Equinox Resort in Manchester Village, VT (p. 97).

The destination chapters proceed north and east, starting inland in Vermont, from South to North, over to Southern and Central New Hampshire (where there's a lovely section on historic Portsmouth), up to the White Mountains (and no, our car has NOT climbed Mt. Washington!), over to Coastal Maine (where I once did two seasons of summer stock, in Belfast and Bar Harbor, but that's another story...) all the way up through the North Woods.

I spend more time reading about and editing books about New England than I do traveling in one of my favorite regions. But on "the list," as in places we want to visit, is Vermont's "Northern Kingdom," where we want to follow Paul's Driving Tour from Hardwick to St. Johnsbury. I must see the Haskell Free Library and Opera house (which lies half in Vermont, half in Canada), and see the remote, beautiful St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, which features the famous painting, The Domes of Yosemite, as well as original works by members of the Hudson River School. So many guides...so many places to go...so little time.