Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great guidebook! Don't leave home without it!, April 26, 2002
Rick Steves' travel philosophy is to travel better by traveling cheaper and closer to the people. If your idea of a dream vacation is sleeping on the eighth floor of a high-rise hotel for a fortune every night, this is the wrong book for you. If your idea of wonderful is to sleep in an exquisite four-poster bed at a Scottish B&B owned by a pleasant old lady who will talk to you for hours, all for about fifty bucks a night -- buy this book. Steves has three big strengths, which are all at work in this book: The most important, by far, is the accomodations. Steves consistently finds amazingly good buys among centrally located B&Bs with friendly owners. The only problem is that everybody knows this, so getting a room on short notice in the summer at one of his spots can be dicey. The second big strength is the practical guides to sights, which include lots of interesting little details that you won't find elsewhere while telling you in no-uncertain terms which sights are must sees and which ones you should skip. Over time, his picks may not always coincide with yours -- but I almost always found his stuff on-target. The third big-strength is Steves' travel philosophy, which is especially helpful to first-time travelers (or those venturing away from the Hilton for the first time). I highly recommend that you also check out Europe Through the Back Door, Steves' classic magnum opus, now in its 19th Edition.
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very comprehensive, shoots from the hip, January 29, 2002
I actually got this book because I am going on a Rick Steves' "Best of London" tour later this year. We booked a couple of days before and after the tour to do some stuff on our own in England, and after browsing several books (Fodor's, Lonely Planet, etc.) in bookstores, I settled on Rick's book.My reasoning wasn't that I was going on one of his tours, it truly was the best book I saw on the shelves. The book isn't dominated by details on London, exactly what I wanted. In fact, Rick suggests you make London the last part of your tour. Why is this a good thing? There are plenty of books that focus on London itself, in fact every tour book I listed before has one. It would be like a foriegn traveler coming to the United States for a couple of weeks and only getting a book on Washington DC. Being that I've never been out of the United States before, I'm a little wary of making reservations and plans without seeing what I'm getting into first. So not only do you get candid reviews on the sites (rated "must see", "try to see", "see if you can", "worth noting"...and sections on what is a waste of time), information on how to get there, where to eat, but most importantly web pages to check out before hand. What's best is that Rick Steves is frank...doesn't sugar coat what is good and what is bad, what is a must see and what is a must avoid. I feel more confident making reservations and plans with this book than I would have with others.
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41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for beginners, March 25, 2002
I'll be going on my second trip to England this summer, and I thought that I would use this book a lot. I had used the London guide two years ago and was very happy with it. But I bought the book a few weeks ago, and I'm kind of disappointed. Since I've already been to England, and know some of what I want to see, this book isn't all that helpful. I don't need just a list of the normal tourist stuff in Edinburgh, or Bath. I think that Rick Steves is great at helping people try to travel on their own, without a tour group, but I don't think that his choice of places to visit are particularly original, or complete. He seems to really like Bath and Blackpool, but totally ignores some of my favorite places in England, such as Canterbury Cathedral. Also, although his directions to finding places in London are great, and he does give some information about each site, he doesn't give nearly enough background information about places to suit me. His directions to places outside of London are not nearly as helpful. If you're an experienced traveler in England, this book is not for you. If you're going for the first time, I'd buy this book for the directions to places and accomodations lists, and to help narrow down choices of places to visit, and then I'd look at other guidebooks to get more in-depth information for specific sites. I'd recommend the Dorling-Kindersley guide to London for starters. His sense of humor is terrific, and I appreciate his honesty about some of the things that he doesn't like, but I need more information than is available here. Spend some time on the internet, looking up things you're interested in, and researching, along with another guidebook or two, and you'll be much happier with your trip to England than you would be if you just relied on this book.
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