Customer Reviews

Norway (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

No one travel book can hope to capture all that might be useful or interesting to know about Norway, but the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Norway may come closest. Compact and portable, the guides are packed with information. Supplemented with some local maps, this guide may be sufficient for most visitors' needs.

The Norway Eyewitness Travel Guide includes maps, photographs, diagrams, and a variety of other graphics, in addition to narrative, to describe Norway as a travel experience. The introduction provides a sense of Norway in terms of its geography, people, and history. Breakdowns follow by region which include the principal attractions. Especially useful are the maps and diagrams of some of the most popular locations, such as the Vigeland Sculpture Park and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. Other sections cover how to get to Norway and how to get around within what is a surprisingly large country. The guide includes information on accomodations, a shopping guide, and basic survival facts for the traveler. As always, the inclusion of a wealth of photographs provides a sense of place and scale for Norway, and will help the traveler make some choices in what to see and do.

This guide is highly recommended to the traveler planning a vacation in Norway. Some careful study will help ensure a wonderful vacation in a beautiful country.

I am planning my trip to Norway this May and have found this book to be very useful. I have other reference books I have used but none of those have the format of this book. It is very easy to find information and I find the maps and pictures very helpful. I would recommend this book if you are planning a trip to Norway or just interested in learning more about the country.

I enjoyed the Eyewitness Travel Guide for Istanbul, although I used the Blue Guide to fill in the many information gaps. However, where the ETG finds success when providing information for a city, it fails when trying to cover an entire country.

This book was almost completely uselss. The Oslo section only covers with any detail the immediate downtown section. The maps for greater Oslo are horrible. The tram and bus information is wrong.

Of couse my largest gripe is my own fault. I knew one skinny book would leave way to much out.

One area the book got right, an area that every single other ETG has gotten wrong, was the food area. Handing the book around to Norwegians on the train brought more than a few, "Yes, that is what I normally eat."

Let me preface this by saying that normally we love the EyeWitness guides, and they are our default choice when it comes to travel guides. Unfortunately, the standard style of the EyeWitness guide breaks down when it comes to covering the entire country of Norway. While this book makes a great overview and introduction to the land and its culture, it doesn't serve as much of a guide once you're there.

One of the big selling points of EyeWitness books is their beautiful hand-drawn maps. Usually these cover interesting neighborhoods, parks, etc. In the Norway book, they use the same system to cover vast regions of the country. Since the advantage of these maps in the other books is the detail, the idea breaks down in such a large scale where they actually end up with less detail (only main roads and towns appear). The illustrating is filled in with uninspiring clip art of animals and rural life, and the maps are nearly useless aside from a general overview.

The beautiful full-color photographs are still there, which admittedly do help us choose and get excited about some of the things we choose to see. And these also make the books a great gift or souvenir. A few sights like the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim do lend themselves to EyeWitness's trademark cut-away visual illustration, but the number of these is very small.

We've owned this book for over a year, and I've been reluctant to write a review until I've given it a fair shot. We've now traveled to quite a few places in Norway, and we found that in all but Oslo and Bergen this book was virtually useless. Oslo and Bergen have enough museums to flesh out the city listings, but the big draw in the rest of the country is the nature and scenery. The important information is less about exhibits and opening hours, and more about how to get around and where to find the most scenic vantage points.

While I've yet to find a truly great guidebook for Norway, we have had better luck with Lonely Planet Norway (Country Travel Guide). Within the larger towns, there are more listings for things to do/see, and the logistical details are much more usable. In most cases, we've carried both, and even when something interesting appears in the EyeWitness, we counted on the Lonely Planet to actually help us get there.

I ordered this book as we are going to Norway next month. Although the photos were beautiful and the history very interesting, I found it short on factual information. I later picked up Frommer's guide which I found to be much more useful, particularly with regard to daytrips, tours, directions.

If you are planning a trip to Norway this book is a must have. It clearly outlines the whole country and does an excellent job with Oslo. There is so much to see and even if you are just doing a cruise of the country this is still worth buying. At the time I was only going to Oslo but on my second trip back I toured the rest of the country and this book was useful on both occasions. While it would be nice if DK made an Oslo book this one will be great in the meantime.

I really like this book. I have many of the DK Eyewitness books, and they are all very good.
Norway" as well as other DK's have wonderful maps, beautiful pictures and valuable information.

User-friendly with gorgeous photos, this guide is the best of its kind.

Thank you, Eye Witness, for making the planning portion of my trip so easy!

Jesse Z.

The eyewitness guides may contain fewer words than competitor's guides, yet you learn far more from them because the sketches, photos, plans, plats, etc. are strikingly well designed and presented in color. It makes SO much difference compared with the dull wordiness of other guides. After you try one, you will not want to buy any guide other than from Eyewitness.

Very detailed and helpful, the author knows Norway so well. If you want to not only visit but to really get to know Norway, it really makes sense to buy this book and to read it and then to carry it with you on your trip. We were delighted to find that the bus from Bergin to the Ryan Air airport (I can't begin to spell the name) goes on the ferry, so if you didn't get to take a water journey during your trip, this is one beautiful (and reasonably priced) way to do it.