Insight Guide Spain (Spain, 7th Ed.)

Rating:
Summary: Not for the serious traveler
Review: This book good and bad, depending on your travel plans. If you have little or no previous knowledge of Spain and just want to romp through the country on a chartered tour, then "Insight: Spain" is more than sufficient. In fact, it's really pretty good. You can find some so-so introductions to Spain's history, culture, and food, and get a good general feel for its geography and landscape before you go there.

But if you're not planning to whiz through the great cities of Iberia and want to get to know places like rural towns and the "countryside," find another guide. (If you're addicted to Spain like myself, this guide is worthless.) First of all, there is no way this 300-page book, a third of which is pictures, can cover the country in any depth. (I haven't had a chance to look at Insight's guides to Northern and Southern Spain and Tenerife, but you might want to check them out.)

The coverage here is mostly limited to museums and cathedrals. If your plans take you anywhere north of Valladolid or Burgos, I highly recommend Cadogan's guide to Northern Spain. There you'll find extensive lists of the best places to stay, off-the-road sites to see, even recommendations on which roads to take. While it, too, spends an awfully lot of time talking about Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, I guess this is kind of unavoidable. And while the Cadogan guide is much more functional than the Insight Guide, the pithy, friendly style of it's British author makes it a charm. Finally, one of the best things about the Cadogan guide is that there isn't a single photograph in it -- why waste the space?

Rating:
Summary: Not for the serious traveler
Review: This book good and bad, depending on your travel plans. If you have little or no previous knowledge of Spain and just want to romp through the country on a chartered tour, then "Insight: Spain" is more than sufficient. In fact, it's really pretty good. You can find some so-so introductions to Spain's history, culture, and food, and get a good general feel for its geography and landscape before you go there.

But if you're not planning to whiz through the great cities of Iberia and want to get to know places like rural towns and the "countryside," find another guide. (If you're addicted to Spain like myself, this guide is worthless.) First of all, there is no way this 300-page book, a third of which is pictures, can cover the country in any depth. (I haven't had a chance to look at Insight's guides to Northern and Southern Spain and Tenerife, but you might want to check them out.)

The coverage here is mostly limited to museums and cathedrals. If your plans take you anywhere north of Valladolid or Burgos, I highly recommend Cadogan's guide to Northern Spain. There you'll find extensive lists of the best places to stay, off-the-road sites to see, even recommendations on which roads to take. While it, too, spends an awfully lot of time talking about Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, I guess this is kind of unavoidable. And while the Cadogan guide is much more functional than the Insight Guide, the pithy, friendly style of it's British author makes it a charm. Finally, one of the best things about the Cadogan guide is that there isn't a single photograph in it -- why waste the space?