Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Turkey, 5th Edition

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

 

 

This was my wife and my second visit to Turkey. We're budget travelers/backpackers. The first time (1 month), we used the Lonely Planet, which wasn't great either. This time (6 weeks) we tried the Rough Guide. What a mistake! Here are some of the problems we had:
- Everything is written as if you have your own car. Lip service is paid to public/alternative forms of transport, but rarely is any useful information given.
- The author(s) must have had their own car, or relied heavily on taxis, because walking even a kilometer seems anathemic: the book frequently suggests that you bargain hard for a taxi if arriving someplace at odd hours, despite the fact that the city center and hotels area kilometer or less away. This pattern is repeated with sites as well: the author's favorite phrase must be: "really only practiable if you have your own transport..." Even a moderately fit person could get to many places that were described this way, even if you only walk 1km/hour.
- Consistent with the above, the author obviously zipped around on a $100+/day budget, because the budget accomidation options are poorly researched, often placed wrong on maps, or absent entirely.
- No sense of the relative merit of sites is given. If you want to wander aimlessly, and, in my opinion, waste your time, this book is fine. However, Turkey is large enough that even with plenty of time one can only hope to cover a fraction of the worthwhile places to visit: hence, we need some indication of the better places to spend our time.
- The overall tone of the book is seems to be geared towards a vacationer who wants to mix a little history with beach and booze. It seemed that the most important thing to note about a town was: where can you find liquor? What's the hip place? I would have liked to see more along the lines of interesting places to eat: for example, "this popular pastanesi is Antakya is visited for its..."
- Lack of a map for towns that many travelers will need to visit. Fortunately, many tourist office will have a town plan, assuming you can catch them during business hours. But no map for Gaziantep?? Give me a break. (The town is a transport hub, and worth visiting anyway for the stunning -- newly unearthed -- mosaics in the museum; far better than the renowned ones in Antakya.)

These are the big problems, the other minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies were so frequent that I became accustomed to them. At least now I know what to expect from Rough Guides!

We were in Istanbul recently and purchased this guide to help us get around. It was worse than useless. There wasn't enough information cautioning us against using the taxis (which are notorious for ripping off tourists), and the guide didn't offer much helpful advice on using the bus, except to say that it wasn't safe. After getting really ripped off by a cab driver, we figured out the bus system on our own and found it to be clean, safe, efficient, and reliable--obviously regular Turks use this, no problem. Much nicer, in fact, than taking the bus in most U.S. cities. To make things worse, the restaurant reviews were out of date--of 2 Chinese restaurants recommended by this guide, one had gone out of business some time ago, and the other, said to be "popular with the local Chinese community," seemed to be entirely staffed by non-Chinese Turks who served lousy food. I especially disliked the guide author's tendency to use Turkish words without translating them, especially when those words were not in the glossary in the back of the book and were not in the index either. Finally, the maps were not very good and difficult to find in the book.

We travel extensively all over the world and have consistently found the Rough Guide series to be the most in-depth, accurate, an useful. The guide to Turkey is no exception. On our trip last year, we used the Rough Guide to find many exceptional and cheap restaurants, often eating for less than $5 a meal for two. When we did not use the book to locate a place to eat, we were disappointed with overpriced, unimpressive fare. Likewise, the hotel we selected in Instanbul using the Rough Guide was exactly as the book described: well located (half-mile from Aya Sofia), incredible value, friendly staff, free Turkish tea, nice free breakfast, and very friendly staff. Venturing out of Instanbul without a car I think would be difficult, as the book points out. I think that is a fair warning, and the authors of the book should not be criticized for cautioning travelers that public transport outside of the cities is somewhat lacking. Another benefit of the Rough Guide is that it often includes interesting sites a little off the beaten path that other travelers often miss and complete enough descriptions to help you appreciate them.

This is the best single guidebook we've found for Turkey. We escort small groups to Turkey...and the Rough Guide is consistently the best single reference for general and historical information. Combined with the Blue Guide to Turkey, it's easy to plan your trip. As usual with the Rough Guides, it has a lot of information for many types of travelers without sacrificing cultural and historical details. Well organized, with good maps (much better than the Lonely Planet series). We've made 5 trips to Turkey now, and find something new from this book each time.

As always with the rough guide series, it hits the mark. What you need to know and points in the right direction for adventure.