Customer Reviews

Insiders' Guide to the Twin Cities, 5th (Insiders' Guide Series)

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THE INSIDERS' GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES, 5TH EDITION is a wonderful book that describes not only the urban neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but many of the suburbs as well (although it does manage to miss close-in ones such as Golden Valley and Edina), as well as the many shopping and dining experiences available in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, including the humongous Mall Of America and some of the smaller record stores and book stores. Overall, this book shows the Twin Cities to be an ethnically diverse area, with a vibrant mix of people and places, including several colleges (the University Of Minnesota being the largest and best-known). This is a wonderful reference book as well as a great guidebook.

This book is full of useful inoformation. As with any book of this nature some of it is going to be out of date before printing but most everything that remains is useful and helpful.

(These comments are on the 4th edition: I hope the 5th is better!) This is everything a guide book should NOT be: not very usable (no useful info to orient you to the city and its neighborhoods); not entirely accurate ("it's next to impossible to find a place to park downtown"... hunh??); and provides very little about the intangibles that give visitors a preview or feel for a new place and help them make decisions. Also some confusingly overlapping maps of downtown.

Just one example of me, a visitor, trying to use this book: I want to go to the Weissman Art Museum, and according to the book, it's located on the banks of the Mississippi river on the U of Minn. campus. Since I'M A VISITOR, I don't know where either is, but thanks... So next I look up U of Minn and it tells me it's near Dinkytown by the river. I look up Dinkytown and it says it's near the U. of Minn. I look on the (confusingly overlapping) downtown maps, and finally locate two U of Minn campuses, but am more confused by the weirdly disorienting maps than when I began. Nothing about "Dinkytown" or ANY of the neighborhood names sprinkled throughout the text. Agh!! Basically, the book is an information dump with headings. Not useful for travelers trying to find their way around. One good thing is it made me appreciate just how difficult it must be to produce a good guidebook.