Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I found the Rough Guide to Turkey extremely frustrating. It is the most poorly organized travel book I have used. Even good information, if poorly organized, becomes useless. I found myself frequently having to piece together information from 3 or 4 different sections to decipher anything useful.
Transportation information: useless.
Accommodation listing: mixed. Of two hotels marked with their highest recommendation, one was very good, the other the worst we stayed in. After that we stopped using the book's suggestions, and just asked other travelers.
Historical information: good, concise, interesting.
Site and activity information: incomplete or incorrect.
We were traveling independently by public transportation for 9 days throughout northern and western Turkey. Whenever I saw another traveler with a different guide book, I begged to borrow it. My Rough Guide ended up in the trash can.

This is a review of the latest (2007) edition of this book.

This was a difficult review for me to write since I have been a fan of "Rough Guides" (and before that, "Real Guides") for some time. While it is a so-so catalog of sights, restaurants, and bars (although disorganized, as others have pointed out), the book is listless and oddly detached in its discussion of Turkey. A quick read of the "basics" can easily convince the reader that it is very difficult to obtain a coffee in Istanbul, the tap water is akin to sewage ("orange"), and a glass of wine? Forget it, the fundamentalists have taken over. Sounds like great fun, eh? Of course all the aforementioned observations are totally untrue. I found the book depressing and sour in tone, if not misleading. Indeed, the book addresses the reader as if he or she were planning a trip to a far off prison farm. For alternatives, try A Hedonist's Guide to Istanbul by Nick Hackworth or the Lonely Planet guide. Although not perfect, both will instill you with the excitement and awe that Turkey can (and does) inspire.

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)

Do not rely on this book. Despite the 2007 copyright, it is way, way out of date and will seriously harm your trip. It certainly harmed out trip.

1) Prices are way off--not just by 10 or 20% but by hundreds of per cent. For example, things listed as $20 sometimes cost $50.

2) The list of hotels is way out of date for every place we went. Some hotels had actually gone out of business years prior to 2007, which is this book's copyright. If you are considering a trip later than 2007, this problem will be still worse. This was true in Marmaris and Bergama and probably many other places.

3) Maps were wrong. Not just inaccurate, but wrong. For example, the location in Marmaris of the ferry to Rhodes was wrong. This was disastrous for us, possibly causing us to miss the ferry. Also, the streets on the map were labelled with names while the actual street signs used numbers instead of names. This may have been due to a renaming of the streets prior to 2007, and the book's map should have reflected the what the signs say.

4) Schedules were wrong. For example, the dolmuses to Troy do NOT leave every 20 minutes as the book says, but every hour, even during peak season.

5) The index is quite incomplete. You should be able to look up a name of a museum, for example in the index and find it in seconds. However, with such an incomplete index, finding information in the book can be a lengthly project--difficult on a busy street corner.

I certainly hope they fix this book, but in its present state it should be avoided--there are other books on travelling in Turkey to use in the meantime.

I have to agree with recent reviewers who were dissappointed by the lack of meaningful practical travel information. The most important thing a travel book can do is tell you how to get from point B to C while you're still in point A. Rough Guide fails completely in this area, showing only a small percentage of the connections a typical (or "rough") tourist would make. Also, the pricing is indeed way off, although given Turkey's highly volatile currency and the recent flushing of the US dollar into the global toilet, I can't really blame the authors for failing to predict the future. I'll also add that with a little negotiating, particularly in off-season, you can get the pricing down to a level closer to what the book says.

Despite all the above problems I'll give the book a middling rather than terrible review because it has great information on all the major sites once you get there. I found the book's descriptions to be just as good as anything a museum will sell you. And the historical background on Turkey is absolutely first-rate--short, easy-to-read, yet comprehensive and intelligent.

Also, I can't say whether you should buy Lonely Planet or another guide. I've been using travel guides for ten years and have concluded that you just can't rely on any trademark--some books are good, some are bad, regardless of the series.

Highly disappointed in the 2007 edition of the Rough Guide to Turkey. I've used the Rough Guide for several other countries, but will not rely on Rough Guides ever again. Agree with the reviewer below who found the pricing to be completely inaccurate, a dearth of maps, and trip planning using the book unreliable.

The recommended hotels turned out to be disastrous for us. We went to a hotel in Izmir that was recommended as a good value at 50 Lira for a double. They charged us 160 Lira. It was also a horrible hotel that should never have been recommended. Found several email addresses for hotels to be non-working. Sirkeci/Gulhane area in Istanbul is a great area to stay in yet there were only 3 hotels in that area listed.

Also, there is no tram/metro map for Istanbul which was shocking. The maps in general were not detailed enough. There should have been several more of various Istanbul neighborhoods.

No mention of Blue Cruise. No mention of how infrequent train schedules are. No recommended itineraries.

Overall: Unreliable and highly UNrecommended.

If you are travelling throughout Turkey, this is one of the better Turkish guidebooks, especially since it covers quite a wide breadth of areas. On the down side, I would have preferred more comprehensive maps (and more maps period). Also, it is not particularly conducive to travellers making plans to be travelling in different areas day-to-day. For example, we were on the Southern Coast and wanted to head up to Ephesus. But it was difficult to schedule the trip, as they were all-day trips offered on Wednesday and Saturday only. And since every tour operator in town had the same schedule, we had no alternatives. It would have been nice to know that there are lots of 2 day trips to Ephesus/Pammulkae. I wish that they had more on the short trips within the country. On the upside, the lodging and restaurant suggestions were excellent. If you are going to Istanbul, definitely get the Eyewitness Guide. It is excellent (too bad it's only for Istanbul). Overall, I would recommend this for those travelling outside of Istanbul.

We used the Rough Guide to Turkey in the summer of 99. Compared to other guides this is the best we have used. While there were a few areas that needed updating, if the guide said a tout would appear to lead you through tunnel, it would happen with uncanny accuracy. Provides almost-guide quality history with substantial detail. Only criticism was that hotel/restaurant not complete but good enough. We used for auto trip Instanbul/Capadoccia/Med coast.

We only used one section of this book, the section on the Northern Aegean. We went to Cunda (near Ayvalik) and to Çesme. The descriptions of each place entertained us as we entered the areas, noting that the simple beauty of the places was invariably described as barren, bordering on inhospitable. At least one of the contributors seemed to have a grudge to bear, pointing out numerous times that the former Greek colonies along the coast had of course lost their former glory since being in the hands of the Ottomans. The most tickling comment by the author was that the Muslims had brought their goats to eat the vineyards the Greeks had left behind. Apparently, the olive groves don't evoke the same wonder to everyone. As other reviews have said, the history provided is interesting, but it is farm from unbiased, possibly even inaccurate.

For beaches in our area, we found a couple that the writers must have missed in their quick visits. We'll keep these as guarded secrets, which may have been the book's intent as well. With beaches, as with hotels, it seems clear whichever contributor visited the area could only recommend the places they had visited, and therefore decided that any place he hadn't stayed or visited was unworthy of anyone else's attention either. The description of Çesme as a small fishing village contrasted greatly with our discovery of it as a tourism-centered marina, lined with a promenade of fish restaurants, each aggressively welcoming passers-by to any available table. The one restaurant the book recommended was the worst we had eaten at during our four nights there. It wasn't even so bad, but not to the level of quality we had seen elsewhere in the town. In fact, the smaller places a block or two in from the water, along Inkilap Caddesi, were surprisingly worth the time to sit down and enjoy, even without the seaside view.

All in all, we found the Rough Guide unhelpful, even misleading. The only good thing it directed us toward was the ruins at Pergamon, a definite worthwhile stopping point. However, there is so much more to enjoy about being a tourist other than the well-preserved ruins and the crowded long beaches.

This is an awful book. It does not have any transportation information. The closes it comes is listing where the bus and train stations are in a city. It does not have any information about what routes are serviced, how long they take, how much they are or when they leave. When there are two or more bus stations it does not have anything about which station to go to. It also is devoid of any hints or feelings one way or another. There is no "Take the train for the nice view" or "Take the bus because the train is awfully slow" It is simply not there.

For a "rough guide" to Turkey I found this book completely lacking. I feel this book is mistitled as it is unlike its companion guides and is ill suited for the task.

The history sections are also rather confusing and not up to the usual Rough Guide standard.

I may never buy Rough Guide again.