Customer Reviews

The London Mapguide

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The London Mapguide was indispensable during our recent trip to the city. Each page's map is jam-packed with information: sites, museums, post offices, parks, hospitals, churches, and even select pubs, restaurants and clubs. Aesthetics are important to me, and I can vouch that this guide is very well put-together, colorful and easy to read. Also, the book handily has pages at the beginning and end with plenty of info about museums and other sites, including hours of operation, their map location pages, pricing, etc. as well as emergency numbers, service info important to tourists, a large Underground map (yes, the famous one) and a fairly comprehensive index of street names.

The most unexpected benefit of the guide was how handy it was for figuring out the public transportation system. We bus-hopped all over London using this guide alone, seeing much more than we would have if we had just taken the Underground. The maps very clearly illustrate all of the bus routes and Tube/railway stops and it's super easy to trace how to get from one part of the city to another, seeing as much as possible along the way.

We used this map guide so much during our stay in London that it feels like as much a memento as anything else we brought home. Just flipping through it now brings back a lot of memories. Another reviewer complains that this guide doesn't cover a very extended area, and while it is true that it doesn't include maps for the outer fringes of London, it covered a perfect area for we tourists spending a week trekking all over the city's heart. I strongly recommend this guide!

I've spent a year in England and have made >30 visits all together.

Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for pubs, hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the underground and the double decker buses. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the city centre. When you get to be an old London hand, remember that the classic Londoners guide will always be an A to Z (zed) map and guide. If you want to go a bit beyond the central core of the city (perhaps to Windsor, Hampton, or further away) you really need the proper AtoZ to be able to find exact routes and streets.

Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

I've lived in London for a year, and have traveled there over 20 times in the past 15 years and I never found any London map or guide that is in the same class as this one.

Easy to read and follow, but most of all the extra identifications of pubs, hotels, tourist attractions, churches etc. make this the fantastic companion for your trip. The book format makes it much easier to find the part of London you want, but unlike a London A to Z book, this one is small enough for your purse or pocket.

Also, the brief textual sections on Museums and galleries, points of interest, entertainments etc. are invaluable. Just a quick look in this area gives you the phone number, times open and closed, and address for just about any thing you will need.

This is simply put the best, bar none, map guide book out there. Certainly an essential whenever I travel to London.

I have used the earlier edition for the past 5-6 years and would't go to London without it. Even the English guides use this book. I just received the 9/5/2000 edition and it contains even more information. Now, many of the well known stores are marked as well as some of the 'must visit' pubs and restaurants. It is hard to believe that this one guide contains all the bus and underground routes, hotels, museums, theaters, shops, places of interest. If you only buy one guide to London, this should be it!

We bought a HUGE stack of guidebooks and maps for our first trip to London. This was by far the most useful of all of our purchases. The map pages were large scale showing the names of all of the small streets and alleyways. We had several other maps that just didn't show enough detail to find our way around. We used the tube map and the street map the most. The information on museums and other sights gives a short description and the important details like location, hours, whether there is a cafe, etc. Other guidebooks were more descriptive and helpful in deciding what to see (we liked Rick Steves and Frommers the best). But, once we made our itinerary decisions, we left the other guidebooks at the hotel and carried this one with us wherever we went.

AMAZING. Such a small book, already worth the piddly amount I paid for it and I haven't GONE to london with it yet.

It it extermly detailed, showing train sations, routes, bus routes and route numbers, underground map and stops onthe street map, shows bars, restruauntts, cinemas, theatres, cultural, churches, tourist, sites walking tours, the works.

it's a full city map - two pages at a time, I think if it were printed as a whoel page it would be a HUGE map, scale is 6" to one mile, so that should give you an idea of what kind of detail it has.

Want to see what's north of yoru page? go to the page number listed, there you go! Along that edge it shows the bus routes going to that new page - JUST AMAZING. I know I won't be able to LIVE without this map while there. Parks, monuments, cemetaries, museums - all of it.

Imagine my surpise to get it and FIND my hotel before we even get there. I mean it's LISTED on the map! Southwark Rd. at Bear Lane and Burrell! All kinds of hotel are ON the map! Right there! I'm tewo block fromthe New Globe! and 3 blocks from the OLD Globe!

BACK FROM LONDON: This book was the only book we used! We left all the others untouched in the bags at the hotel. We never left the hotel with out checking our pocket for the Mapguide. Once we got to our destination, and were not lost, just not sure which direction of the busy wide intersection to go and asked a passing local. She took one look at the guide and went "Wow, this is a great map!" and asked where we got it. She wanted one for her car!

To say this mapguide was essential would not be high enough praise. We still tell any friends we have to buy the book when they go over. We loved using it so much, and told so many folks about it, we are going to Paris we hope soon and already ordered the Paris edition just in case! Any large cities we travel to will always be hopefully with a Penguin mapguide! This is worth it's weight in gold.

This is the best eight bucks I spent in preparation for my trip to London. These maps are thorough, clear, and up to date. You can tell the wide roads from the narrow roads, and the tiniest streets are included. When you travel off the map, the page on which your route continues is clearly marked. And while each page is just a tiny section of the city, the layout of the book keeps it all in context. Theaters, hotels, pubs, Underground stops, and other handy locales are even marked (by name!) on the maps.

One of my traveling companions carried a guidebook around and kept referring to its inferior, confusing maps. If I had relied on that, I would probably have ended up in Finland, scratching my head and looking for the train. This book is worth buying just for the confidence you gain just by knowing where you're going, not to mention the arguments avoided and time saved.

This map took me around London for three weeks. It's clear and detailed, and has so much information right on the page: stores, restaurants, pubs, post offices, theatres, museums, hotels, and even statues. It includes a tube map, of course, overlaid on the streets, so you can find the stations easily. Small and thin enough so that I never went anywhere without it.

Just got back from a week in London and The London Mapguide proved it has what it takes to get you around the town.My niece who was the "navigator" for our trip turned to me at one point and asked me where I got this great map.
We were armed with numerous travel guides including the A to Z map book as well as local maps etc. but my niece swore by the London Mapguide and we never got lost and found a lot of great pubs and markets etc. as well as the top touring spots.
So, I strongly recommend this mapguide if you are headed to London.It is an investment well made!

I recently returned from 5 days in London - no tour group, no guides, and no prior knowledge of the city. Not wanting to carry around a large guidebook, I took this mapguide with me each day. It was absolutely essential! Everything from restaurants to tube stops is well-labeled and easy to decipher. It fit right into the side pocket of my small, over the shoulder purse and was easily tucked away when I didn't need it. I love to "get lost" in the small side streets and when I did need to find my way back to the main roads, it was simple to see where I was. Quite frankly, this was as essential to my trip as my passport! Don't leave home without it!