Blue Guide Bulgaria (Blue Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Cultural and Historical Guide
Review: In keeping with it's tradition of excellence, the Blue Guide series has produced another marvelous travel guide, this time to the little known treasure that is Bulgaria. The Blue Guide series does not focus on hotel and restaurant infromation but rather provides unparalleled information on history, architecture, culture, and geography. That is what the Blue Guide does, and it does it better than anyone else. I use the series in concert with another guide such as one of the Lonely Planet series for hotel and restaruant information, although in this case I would recommend the Rough Guide to Bulgaria. To get the most out of your Bulgarian holiday make sure you have The Blue Guide in your glove box!

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Cultural and Historical Guide
Review: In keeping with it's tradition of excellence, the Blue Guide series has produced another marvelous travel guide, this time to the little known treasure that is Bulgaria. The Blue Guide series does not focus on hotel and restaurant infromation but rather provides unparalleled information on history, architecture, culture, and geography. That is what the Blue Guide does, and it does it better than anyone else. I use the series in concert with another guide such as one of the Lonely Planet series for hotel and restaruant information, although in this case I would recommend the Rough Guide to Bulgaria. To get the most out of your Bulgarian holiday make sure you have The Blue Guide in your glove box!

Rating:
Summary: Condescending, little useful info, and woefully out of date.
Review: The only things that were useful to me in this book were the maps, and even they were out of date. To read this book (written long ago in 1998), you'd think that Bulgaria was a.) boring, b.) dangerous, and c.) miserable. Bulgaria, as I discovered on a trip this summer, is none of the above: it is beautiful, warm, fascinating and an incredible amount of fun. Blue Guide should really go out of its way to update this guide to reflect Bulgaria as it truly is now: much more forward thinking, much more westernized, and very tourist friendly, with a ton of fascinating and (still) affordable things to do and to see. Spend your money on a better, recent guide.

Rating:
Summary: A lot of history not very much practical information
Review: This guide is rather lacking in a many areas. Most notable information on hostels and campgrounds and such. However, it contains a lot of historical background on churches and other areas of intrest in Bulgaria. Unforunately this information dominates most of the guide. If you are looking for a travel guide I recommend Bulgaria a Rough Guide it contains much more pertinent information for the world traveler.