Customer Reviews

Pacific Northwest (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a huge fan of Eyewitness Travel Guides. If they are available, I buy them for every city (country) I visit, and I have several on places I haven't been, but am interested in and/or want to visit. Naturally, I was very excited when I saw that a guide was coming out that included the city I live in (Seattle) and two of my favorite Northwest destinations (Portland and Vancouver). I was also glad to see there were also going to be sections on Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

That being said, I feel this guide is quite disappointing. I'll comment on each city.

Portland:

I have been to Portland a few times, for short trips, and the guide at least covers everything I have done in this beautiful and quaint city. It offers a great amount of information on Portland's interesting neighborhoods, beautiful parks and squares, and extensive information on Downtown, Old Town, Washington Park, and the Pearl District. However, it glosses over some of Portland's most interesting areas, such as the Rose Quarter, the Hawthorne District, and Northwest 23rd (Nob Hill). Those are some of the most interesting areas of the city, and we get little information here. Most of these areas are covered in the "Further Afield" section, but are very much a part of Portand and should have been more expensively covered. One of the biggest misfires is the lack of maps the MAX Light Rail network and Portland's Tram Network. Although every major hotel will be able to provide guests with maps, it would be nice to have them available here.

VANCOUVER:

I was impressed with the Vancouver section of this guide, and really have no complaints other than the lack of a map of the Sky Train Network, which is pretty decent and easy to use. The guide gives indepth coverage of some of Vancouver's best; Stanley Park, Downtown, the Waterfront, Gastown, Chinatown, Yaletown and Granville. I also appreciated the extensive information on Vancouver's main shopping thoroughfare - Robson Street.

SEATTLE:

This is the section I was really disappointed with. The guide provides decent coverage of Downtown, Pioneer Square, Pike Place Market, the Waterfront, Seattle Center, and Belltown, but it is a bit weak. Not much is talked about re: Seattle's great shopping district downtown. A 3D map would have been appreciated and very helpful. It gives little mention of Westlake Plaza, which offers a variety of artist events during the summer, Westlake Center, and the shops that line the streets between 4th and 7th Avenues.

It also pays too much attention to Belltown, which is one of my favorite areas of the city, however, there are more interesting places. Capitol Hill, the University District, and Fremont are glossed over. More attention could have been paid especially to Capitol Hill, where some of the city's best shopping, resturants, and nightlife can be found, along 15th Avenue East, Broadway, and Pike and Pine Streets. Mentioning Capitol Hill in the "Further Afield" section is also distressing. This area is a must see for any visitor. Fremont, the Univeristy District, and Wallingford (which wasn't mentioned) have more to offer as well.

The biggest misfires are the failure of the Underground Tour (in Pioneer Square) and Queen Anne being mentioned. After Seattle's great fire, most of the area was just shoveled over, leaving buildings and streets completely underground. Today, you can take a tour of the area. Although I think it's a bit over-rated, the tour offers excellent historical information about Seattle's beginnings, which provides plenty of comedy. Kerry Park, on the top of Queen Anne Hill, offers the single most spectacular views of Seattle (in the entire city) and absolutely should not be missed. It isn't even mentioned here, which I find shocking. There are also some fine resturants on Queen Anne Avenue and in Lower Queen Anne, which aren't mentioned in this guide.

I was also surprised to not find the Museum of Flight discussed in the Seattle section. It is discussed in the Washington section, which isn't right. The museum is in Seattle and should be included as one of the best things to do in Seattle. Someone who was only visiting Seattle may not look in the Washington section, and could miss this interesting museum.

CONCLUSION:

I can understand why they wanted to lump these three cities together - it's just too bad they took too many shortcuts. For the first time, I cannot recommend an Eyewitness Guide. There are guides that are much more extensive for each destination. If you are traveling to one of these spots for a very short trip, I would recommend this guide. Otherwise, you are better off going with something that didn't take short cuts.

We picked the Eyewitness guide to the Pacific Northwest for a recent trip to Portland and Seattle in part because there were few other options: the Fodors, Lonely Planet, and Michelin Green Guides all seem to be out of print and dated. Like its brethren, this Pacific Northwest Eyewitness guide is strong on visual information, and weak on description.

The book has lots of pictures and good maps, helping you get around and then recognize your goal or destination once you get there. But descriptions and explanations of specific places range from a few sentences to (at most) a few paragraphs for the major sites.

For example, for Seattle the section on Pike Place has great visual information to help you find your way around the market, but just a few sentences each on the Pike Place fish throwers and the original Starbucks. And while the Space Needle gets a few pictures and two columns of text, and the relatively new Experience Music Project is also given a nice two page spread, other fascinating experiences like the Seattle Underground Tour in Pioneer Square are not even mentioned. I'm sure Lonely Planet had that one.

Bottom line: this Eyewitness guide to the Northwest can't be beat for its photos and useful maps, but as with any Eyewitness guide it helps to have an additional supplement--a friend who can show you around the area, or another guidebook--to make up for what the Eyewitness lacks in details. Buy this guide primarily for the pictures and maps, and then keep it as a souvenir when your trip is over.

For some reason, Amazon doesn't list the 2006 printing of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide to the Pacific Northwest.

In looking through a copy at Barnes & Noble yesterday afternoon, I noticed that many highlights of Seattle that were overlooked in the 2003 edition (but were included in the DK Seattle Top 10 book) were included in the 2006 printing.

These include the Underground Tour, the Experience Music Project & Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the Museum of Flight and the sculptures in Fremont (the troll under the bridge, the people waiting for the bus, the Lenin statue, etc.).

DK/Eyewitness Travel Guides are GREAT! I wish DK published more areas. Lots of pictures, great descriptions, well put-together graphics, quality printing. The books are entertaining even if you just dream of traveling to far-off lands. These books really give you a feel of what the areas are like, the culture, sightseeing locations, even the food!

I have bought Fodor's and Frommer's and they just don't compare, even Fodor's information was wrong and outdated though the date of the book was the same year I traveled. DK blows the others out of the water!

Recently we attended a wedding in Portland, Oregon and decided to see some things while we were there. This book was extremely helpful as we were deciding what to see and do. This book is colorful and so pleasing to the eye. There are lots of photos and the maps are excellent. It gives a general overview of the area, and you learn a bit about the history too. We narrowed down what we could do in the time we had available and we took in the Columbia River Gorge area including Multnomah Falls, Portland (definitely go to Powell's Bookstore - one of the largest bookstores in the world), and then part of the Oregon coast. We stayed in Seaside, but Cannon Beach is less touristy and a nicer town. Make sure to visit Haystack Rock during low tide to see the sea stars and sea anemones in the tidal pools. Enjoy your trip! The other book that we found very helpful Is Insight Guides: The Pacific Northwest.

I found the "Pacific Northwest Eyewitness Travel Guide" helpful in planning our recent trip but still not a one-stop reference as it seems less complete than the comparable "Fodor's Pacific Northwest, 18th Edition: with Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver."

We traveled with both books, and our experience was that the Eyewitness guide was less detailed but more slanted to offer ideas for those wanting to stay on the beaten path. Certainly, the photos and graphics make everything seem alive and vibrant, perhaps leading to some mild disappointment when reality clashes with professional photography.

There is good travel advice and contact information here, and I think using this book in conjunction with another travel guide, again, we used the Fodor's, helped up compare and contrast.

Of course, the flaw for any printed guide is its ephemeral nature, an unavoidable characteristic of any book, especially in a Web-based world. Still, I would rather have a guide to consult and carry than stare at a small monitor or rely on outdated information from a cranky GPS that is hell-bent on recalculating whenever one decides to take a detour or unplanned stop.

We were doing a 2 week trip down the west coast from Vancouver to San Francisco (with about 2 days in each major city), so opted to buy this book to cover the Vancouver-Seattle-Oregon portion of the trip, so we didn't have to buy a separate book for each city. After spending a couple of days in Vancouver, and reading up on Seattle, we determined that this book was useless and we went to a bookstore and bought new books for each of Seattle and Oregon. This book covers only a totally superficial summary of each region, and omits massive parts. For instance, in Seattle, the book only covered two sections of town -- the waterfront area and the Space Needle area. Both of these areas were tourist-centric with limited stuff to do, and took only a half day of our time. The book was also sparse on important details. For instance, in Vancouver, we wanted to visit Stanley Park -- something that no trip is complete without. The park is on the north end of the city, but quite close to downtown. Nonetheless, while the book said that it was a must-do, it didn't include the park on map. It simply included a bus icon, and bus route number. Based on that, we had no idea how far it was, whether it was a full day activity, etc etc, so we just didn't know what to expect. It turned out that the park was only about 20 minutes walk from the heart of the city. You need that kind of basic info in a guidebook. We ultimately determined that this book was probably suitable for people who were spending extremely limited time in these regions, ie if they were just doing a cruise and had a half day to kill. Anything more than that and you need a more comprehensive book.

DK's Eyewitness Travel Guide: Pacific Northwest provides a great introduction and overview to traveling in the Pacific Northwest. The book hits on the most salient aspects of this region supported by those generous illustrations we've come to expect from this publisher. This DK book is logically and ergonomically designed, not so much to be read cover to cover, but for more "in and out" quick referrals. The different areas/cities it covers are colorfully indexed and there's even a convenient built in book mark. The physical book itself is designed to be used and abused with a tough binding and substantial cover. Overall, I recommend the book, especially if you are visual learner, however, the savvy traveler will most likely want to equip themselves with a Moon or Lonely Planet (perhaps both) guide book as well.

this guidebook was helpful in planning our trip to the northwest;
we also used the lonely planet guide. The eyewitness guide had nice
pictures and the lonely planet guide had more information. These days
you are often referred to a web site for more information.
Both guides were purchased at a significant savings through Amazon
rather than Barnes and Noble. Both guides together should provide
whatever you need to know for travel in the Northwest.

This publisher does such an excellent job of balancing image + text so that the reader gets a good idea of the place and enough information to do more research on the places/recommendations that are of interest. They are beautiful books and I find them an excellent way to re-visit a place I love once I have returned from my trip. A good investment for planning and for remembering.