Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges, and Brussels 2003

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rick Steves (and his "silent" partner Gene Openshaw) have established a successful travel-book franchise by writing primarily for on-a-budget travelers. The conversational, reassuring "Good Ol' Rick" tone of the books seems to be intended to allay the anxiety many people feel about traveling in other countries.

The Amsterdam book, like the others, does best with the sightseeing aspects of travel, highlighting the "must-see" attractions and going into detail about what it is you're seeing when you're there. I'm not as impressed with his choices for lodging and meals -- I didn't find it helpful to know, for example, that there's a good snack bar in the Amsterdam train station.

The detailed information about the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum and even the Red Light District proved to be accurate. I find the writing by Rick and his colleagues to be entertaining and (with the one caveat mentioned above) helpful.

I've been to Belgiun and The Netherlands many times. 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!

Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.

Frommer's
These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.

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.

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.

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for 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 public transportation system. 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 center of the city.

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!

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.)

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.

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

I found this guidebook very useful on my recent trip to Europe. Using it, I found some really nice, out of the way spots that weren't mentioned in standard guidebooks. I also found it a little friendlier and easier to use than some of the other guidebooks. The only downside is that the maps are kind of hand-drawn and not quite as precise and detailed as those in other books.

Rick Steves' books have helped me out a number of times in Europe. The information is up to date and Rick really seems to get into the threads that make up the fabric of a travel destination. He tells you when not to go to places and what's the best way to get there, etc. better than any of the other books I have read about this region. I would give it 5 stars but the less-than-stellar photos and the not-to-scale, hand-drawn maps in the book could be better. The travel advice Rick gives however, is indispensable. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book for traveling to this area.

Rick and team do their consistently good job in helping with travel in the 3 cities covered. However, if you want to see anything else in Belgium you will need to purchase an additional travel book. I hope that in the future they will decide to include Antwerp, Gent and other areas. It seems they could at least indicate how to do other areas as day-trips from the major cities since the train system makes it easy to get there.

We carried the Frommers and the Rick Steves, but found the Rick Steves to contain more detailed, personal knowledge, was easy to follow, and his maps were clear and useful. It felt like he was standing beside us, anticipating our questions and concerns, giving us tips, etc. We have always used Frommers or Fodors and have been satisfied with both, but we are now Rick Steve's converts.

He also gives lots of historical background which we found interesting and helpful. We found ourselves, after a while, using only the Rick Steves book.

( An interesting sidebar: The Frommers' book, when discussing the Anne Frank House, such an important and much visited site in Amsterdam, the author failed to even mention the basic fact that the Frank family was Jewish and that Anne and her family were persecuted because they were Jews. )

Having just returned from a visit to the Low Countries, we found this guide to be very helpful. Though it does not go off the beaten path, concentrating instead on the major cities, it does cover those cities well, with transportation information as well as hotel and restaurant recommendations which we found reliable. Maps show the metro stops, which is handy, and the book includes walking tours of the cities and some museums. Recommended.

Rick Steves gives no-nonsense advice on the things you really need to see. He's a little more enthusiastic than warranted when it comes to Brussels (blecch!), but his other recommendations are spot on. We used this book so often on our Low Countries trip that we started referring to it as "the Bible." One caveat: expect to see other Rick Steves-toting tourists wherever you go.

so far, rick steve's travel guides have served me well.
i usually supplement another, perhaps glitzier, travel book
with his. he searches out and reports on sights/sites
that are off the beaten track and certainly worth looking for.
his hand-drawn maps are more complete and easier to use than
many others.

This book covered more than I expected for the area. However, I found it hard to follow the information. The walking tours were hard to follow. And if you wanted details on the stops on the walking tour, you had to go to a different or two different pages in the book. And I was not always sure that I was where I wanted to be.
I had two other books and found the others easier to follow.
I was pleased that there were some smaller cities that were detailed in the book.