Rating: 
Summary: Great if you do not need practical information
Review: This book features fantastic photos in high gloss and some great bits of information. But if you're looking for a travel guide with hotels and restaurants and practical information, stick to the Let's Go guide or the Lonely Planet guide or Rough Guide. All in all it's a beautiful book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Supplemental Guide
Review: This book lives up to its slogan: it shows you what the others only tell you. The pictures are beautiful and the maps are excellent--much larger than you would usually find in other guidebooks.The guidebook also covers British history, food and money. Because of the amount of illustrations and pictures, however, it would not be the only guide I would buy if traveling to Britain. I would recommend this book as a complement to other guidebooks from which you could get more detailed info on lodging and prices.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent practical overview
Review: This guidebook is essential for someone traveling to the UK, particularly for the first time. Of the 3 or 4 books I bought, this was the one I took along on the trip. Highlights include its detailed visual summary of all the major attractions, along with the practical info needed (hours/months of operation, etc) and detailed section on practical travel related topics (money, phones, modes of transport), contact info, and great area maps and overhead angled views of particularly interesting locations and buildings. The B&B and restaurant sections are also useful but need to be supplemented with the appropriate focused guides on those subjects. Color coded sections make it even easier to find what you're looking for fast. The only significant drawback is that it is heavy for its size due to the glossy, full color pages. These comments also apply to all the other Eyewitness Guides that I've seen.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice pictures but not organized and not enough content
Review: When I bought this book at a local bookstore to prepare for an upcoming trip to Great Britain -- it looked like the perfect book. Nice bright glossy photos made it interesting to flip though, and get good ideas of where and what to see. However, I'm now in the planning stages of my trip and find the book is falling short. It is organized by MAJOR area, but the smaller areas aren't labelled well and are hard to find. And then, for the most part, both restaurants and hotels AREN'T in the section that covers a small area, they are jammed in the back like an afterthought. This means if you are planning to stay in one area, you cant look to see where to stay without flipping to the back. There are simple 1/2 line descriptions, with an address/phone number, and a ballpark price. Outside of looking at price, there is very little indication that says, "hey this is a luxury hotel" or "that hotel is overpriced" or "watch out, there is no air conditioning in that hotel" The book does have nice pictures which is important, I find myself saying, "Hey, Id like to go to see that!" So for getting ideas on where to visit, it's good. It also has some helpful travel advice on what to do and what to pack, etc It includes pictures of local food, which is good so you know what you might run into. Although I'll probably bring this book with me on vacation, there simply isn't enough information to decide where to stay and where to eat -- and the information that IS there isn't organzied properly. I used a Frommer's guide last year for London and for Ireland, and it was incredibly helpful for planning that trip. I recently bought a Frommer's England 2000 guide which is organized much better -- but only covers England so I'll have to buy Frommer's Scotland 2000 too -- but I'll have the information I need.
Rating:
Summary: AN ANGLOPHILE'S TEXT BOOK
Review: When I received this book in the mail, I was quite surprised at its size. It's thicker than some of the other Eyewitness travel books, but this should not discourage you! There is so much information that one can get very engrossed in reading and learning from it for hours on end. I found the maps extremely useful and the different sections divided up for easy referencing made locating places to eat, hotels to stay at, and things to see very quick and easy. What a wonderful guide! The pictures are superb and it really is a clever travel companion. I've found the Eyewitness travel books to be very smart and practical...a real asset to the frequent, casual, and even business traveler. I recommend it highly as a companion guide to other travel books you may acquire about Great Britain, however it could do the job quite well on its own also.
Rating:
Summary: Big book...lots of info!
Review: When I received this book in the mail, I was quite surprised at its size. It's thicker than some of the other Eyewitness travel books, but this should not discourage you! There is so much information that one can get very engrossed in reading and learning from it for hours on end. I found the maps extremely useful and the different sections divided up for easy referencing made locating places to eat, hotels to stay at, and things to see very quick and easy. What a wonderful guide! The pictures are superb and it really is a clever travel companion. I've found the Eyewitness travel books to be very smart and practical...a real asset to the frequent, casual, and even business traveler. I recommend it highly as a companion guide to other travel books you may acquire about Great Britain, however it could do the job quite well on its own also.
Rating:
Summary: Lush Photography and Thorough Coverage
Review: When planning trips to Europe, I frequently consult Eyewitness travel guides, because of their great breadth of coverage and strong organization (regions in the specific country are divided into colors). It can sure make navigating through the pastoral Lake District and captivating city of London that much easier. Of course, the strongest point is the massive coverage of London. There are about seventy pages devoted to this stunning capital. All the main sights are covered, with their hours, photos/remarkable drawings, historical insights, and all the other necessary information included. From there, this book goes off into all the intricacies of Great Britain, from Bath to Scotland. Coverage remains strong, be it Cambridge or Wales. This travel guide is a nice change from Fodor's dreary presentation on stark black and white pages; reading about and planning travel should be enjoyable, not like reading a textbook. This book, on the other hand, does a nice job of making that happen. Another strong point, is the fact that the book is able to meld history, graphical representations, and all of the major sights, towns, and villages of Great Britain into its copious amount of pages. The introduction, with such information as a quick glance at British history and typical foods, is a nice touch. The countryside tours and stately home inserts are both informative and lavish, as are the "street-by-street" layouts, which are used for many of the towns and cities. This book disappoints, though, on the coverage of hotels; there is a rather slim representation of hotels available, especially in London. Overall, this book is well presented, thoughtful, and edifying - a necessary guide through what can be the intimidating isle of Great Britain.
|
