Customer Reviews

Vienna (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a surprisingly effective and well-organized guide, with some interesting photos. If you're planning on spending just a few days in Vienna, then this compact little book will be indispensible in locating the famous streets and tourist sights. The maps are more than adequate and the walking descriptions to each locale are precise and accurate. There is also corresponding material on how to use the U-Bahn in the city and which station to take for each particular site. There is a separate chapter on the churches of the city with a brief ranking system for the nosiest places, the friendliest, the cheapest food, etc.

If you're planning a lengthy sojourn in Vienna or if you already know the city well, then this book would not be as helpful. It is solely intended for the casual tourist and there is little, if any, information on the intriguing environs of the city. Many of the best sites are neglected because most tourists don't want to bother or simply don't have the time to stick around. Still, this is a thrifty guide you can stick in your pocket and consult when you need to find a restaurant, beer haunt or hotel. In short, if you're a first timer to Vienna, enjoy one of the greatest cities in Europe and be sure to tuck away Brook's guide.

As helpful and user-friendly as one has come to expect from DK Guides, this book on Vienna will help you track down key buildings such as the Hundertwasser Haus, the best coffeehouses such as the Cafe Sperl, and some interesting out-of-the-way places such as the Werkbundsiedlung that will make your trip more enjoyable. It also maps out the underground metro system and gives you an outline of the extensive trolley bus service. Of course, these guides are always subject to changes when it comes to hotels, restaurants, theaters and museum times, so one should check out the DK website for the latest updates. The maps key you into the districts of Vienna with beautiful illustrations, such as impressive cut-away sections of Stephansdom and other major buildings, along with photos of the buildings and quarters which comprise this great city. The guide also fills you in on the important dates and history of the city down through the ages to clue you into the meaning of the sites. It does lack a good overall map of the city, but these are easily available in Vienna. Best of all, you have a very nice way to recap your trip when you get home.

I picked up this guide for my trip to Vienna based on my perusal of all the Vienna city guides at my local bookstore. I had already booked an air and hotel package so was looking for a guide to the major sights, history, food and transportation. This book filled the bill quite nicely. Vienna is an imperial city with a rich history and the Eyewitness guides are well known for their depth in that area. Also useful was the star rating system for sights not to be used, and very useful information on the wonderful transportation system we had included with our Vienna Card. There were some good tips on dining, particularly in the Vienna cafes. One of my favorite features was the survival guide with lots of practical information on transportation from the airport, diagrams of bus, tram and subway lines, and more. If you don't need hotel information, this is probably the best guide for the money.

There are two kinds of travel guides, and both are useful: those guides that help you to plan your trip, and those to carry in your shirt pocket when the shoes hit the pavement. This Eyewitness Travel Guide is one of the best, if not the best, guidebook to use for planning your Vienna trip before you go. There is a tremendous amount of material, so the book uses small fonts and thin glossy paper; still, it has quite a bit of heft and may not be convenient to carry in your shirt pocket (and if you think this is thick, you should see the China guidebook). But I read about a lot of attractions here that I couldn't find in other reputable publications, and found more details in DK.

If you want a quick guide to the sights while you are out and about the town, you may want to consider the compact DK Top Ten Guidebook. The two books have a great deal of overlap, but there's some information that was unique to the top ten guide.

The Eyewitness DK guides are beautiful books in their own right--you would enjoy reading them even if you didn't make the trip. The text is well organized and extensively illustrated with artwork and 3-D pictures of the major tourist attractions. The directions are excellent and they direct you to the important things to see at each location.

A particularly helpful feature is a section with specific instructions on how to use Vienna's extensive public transportation system including a description of the various types of tickets and pictures of the ticket machines.

This guide blows the competition out of the water.

Vienna is a fascinating place to visit and this is a great book to use. For once I did not find the subdivisions as useful in this book. Vienna can be a very confusing city to get around until you get the hang of it and sometimes the street maps in the book cut off in odd places. Despite that the recommendations of things to see and do and the smaller maps were top notch. I saw almost everything this book recommends within one jam packed three day weekend. Highly recommend.

My work has provided me with the opportunity to travel a good bit. I am the type of person who wants to get a working background for my destinations, both in terms of history and geographic layout. Because I work, I don't have a great deal of time to spend reading and studying different, often lengthy, travel guides before or during my trips.

Because these guides are concise, beautifully illustrated, relatively compact, and impeccably organized, I cannot recommend highly enough the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides! The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide is THE guide I buy for every destination. Not only do I get a quick history and background of the destination, but I also will be provided with a visual guide to everything. The visual detail is really what sets the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides apart.

The street maps of common destination points are drawn in dimensional detail so you will visually recognize when you "get there." This is particularly helpful when you don't speak the native language.

The regional maps are colorful and concise. However, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide really shows its stuff with the drawings associated with attractions such as museums. Their presentation of museum layouts allow the traveler who is short on time to quickly see the best of the museum within the time the traveler has to spend.

Each DK Eyewitness Travel Guide has a good summary section in the back with practical information about where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, and how to get around.

While I may supplement the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide with others for a more detailed travel guide, the other guide is only more to read, not more to see. Buy the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide first for any destination.

Remember, no guide is perfect, and things change after printing. Sometimes paintings are stolen, loaned out, or being restored. Sometimes streetwork is being performed or buildings are being renovated. No other guide I know of updates information any faster than DK. Check the internet if you must get up-to-the minute information.

These books are beautiful and informative and perfect for a pre-trip virtual tour of any city. However, I find them overly complex for actual touring and rely more on Rick Steves for Europe and Lonely Planet or Frommers for everything else. I buy a DK guide to any large city I am headed for and spend many happy hours with them pre and post trip. I would highly recommend you do the same. And since travel guides are as varied as the travelers who use them, you might find these to be the perfect book to carry with you.

This Vienna Guide was obviously not updated recently. For example, the Benvenuto Cellini salt cellar is prominently illustrated in the section on the Kunsthistorische museum. Unfortunately, when I went there I found out that it had been stolen from the museum in May 2003. So much for the "updated" 2004 version. There are similar art items (such as the Vermeer) that have been loaned out to other museums for an extensive period, and should not have been listed in the 2004 guide.
In addition, most of Vienna as of late June 2004 is being renovated, so you will find the exteriors of the Schoenbrunn Palace, the Staatsoper, the Kunsthistsorische museum, and even the Hotel Sacher in scaffolding, and the Parliament building's steps and fountains are a pile of rubble as they are being rebuilt. The Guide offered no warning for any of these.
On the positive side, the Guide offers a good map of the underground and how to get to the city from the airport (the CAT train from the airport is even easier than the Guide indicates). It also offers a street map of the area most tourists would visit. However, the street I had to go to (Schikanedergasse) was not listed in the Guide map even though it was within the map area, and the seam in the book divided the map in an awkward fasion.
The Guide also offers some good descriptions of the area within the Ringstrasse. However, some buildings that are a block or two apart are described in different sections of the book, so you may miss out on some of the sights if you only look at one section at a time.
All in all, the book offered some help, but at times the information was vague or outdated. The next time I go to Vienna I shall consult another guide.

We bought the Insider guides for Prague, Budapest & Vienna after reading good reviews. They were the best for finding where things were. The street index, references to maps, etc. were excellent. Liked the pictures, giving us an idea of what we would see. The only reason to not give more stars is the weight of the book, as it seemed twice as heavy as other guide books and this was a negative. Also this newest edition had wrong times for tour of the synagogue in Vienna and we missed seeing it because of this. Some shops had moved and were not where the book said they were.