Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Tunisia 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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If you're bound for Tunisia, you won't want to leave without this book. I'm one of those people who thinks there is never any *one* guide that's ideal for a destination -- I always take 2 good guides. And, for Tunisia, the Rough Guide is definitely the first of the two.

It is much, much more comprehensive than any other guide. The Blue Guide (my other choice for Tunisian visits), Lonely Planet Guide (also excellent though with less background), and others literally do not have 1/2 the content of the Rough Guide.

By supplementing this book with one other one (the Blue Guide for in-depth history & cultural information, or the Lonely Planet Guide for a smaller, hipper subset of travel tips) you'll have a great Tunisian stay. Whichever "other" guide you choose, you'll want this one for the COMPLETE story of any destination in any corner of Tunisia.

Whether you're basking on the corniche at Hammamet, Bizerte, or la Marsa; travelling to tourist meccas like the Tunis Medina, Carthage, Sfax, Jerba, el Djem, Matmata and the Sahara palmeries; or taking jaunts to more out-of-the-way spots like Kerkouane or Tabarka... Take this book.

I'm a editor in Sweden and purchased this guide (together with Lonely Planet Tunisia) after my visit to Tunisia. Both are most useful in my work now and I highly recommended them. For those who are planning to visit Tunisia - prepare by reading the Rough Guide, and use the LP Tunisia as a guidebook during your visit.

The current Rough Guide (8th ed., March 2009) is better in every way than the current edition of Lonely Planet Tunisia (4th ed., April 2007), covering more and in greater detail. A glance at the accommodations section for Tunis shows 32 hotels and hostels reviewed by Rough Guide, compared to the 14 in Lonely Planet. The best hotel we found in Jerba, Hotel Arischa, comes recommended by Rough Guide, and is not even listed in Lonely Planet. Prices have increased significantly since LP was researched, and you will find generally more accurate information in RG.

That's not to say the current LP isn't useful, and I'm still a big fan of their books. With so little travel information available in English, I'd recommend just getting both books and cross-referencing. But this should without a doubt be your primary resource.

I took this guide book as well as the Lonely Planet toTunisa for a month. I could have easily gotten along with just the Planet, and it's smaller to lug around. The Rough Guide was often either vague, or the information was so wrong that I got the impression that some of the places written about were never actually visited by the writter. Directions were hard to follow and the layout of information was not nearly as concise as the Planet Guide. I was tempted to ditch this book many times along the way as it really wasn't worth the space it took up in my pack.

If you're bound for Tunisia, you won't want to leave without this book. I'm one of those people who thinks there is never any *one* guide that's ideal for a destination -- I always take 2 good guides. And, for Tunisia, the Rough Guide is definitely the first of the two.

It is much, much more comprehensive than any other guide. The Blue Guide (my other choice for Tunisian visits), Lonely Planet Guide (also excellent though with less background), and others literally do not have 1/2 the content of the Rough Guide.

By supplementing this book with one other one (the Blue Guide for in-depth history & cultural information, or the Lonely Planet Guide for a smaller, hipper subset of travel tips) you'll have a great Tunisian stay. Whichever "other" guide you choose, you'll want this one for the COMPLETE story of any destination in any corner of Tunisia.

Whether you're basking on the corniche at Hammamet, Bizerte, or la Marsa; travelling to tourist meccas like the Tunis Medina, Carthage, Sfax, Jerba, el Djem, Matmata and the Sahara palmeries; or taking jaunts to more out-of-the-way spots like Kerkouane or Tabarka... Take this book.