Rick Steves' Great Britain 2004

Rating:
Summary: A great guidebook! Don't leave home without it!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Well-worn track through Britain
Review: Steves is full of practical travel advice, but he sticks to his own itinerary, hitting some of the most heavily traveled spots of Britain and seldom venturing off the beaten track. The complete absence of information on the beautiful and historic southwest of England including Winchester, Salisbury, and Cornwall is shocking.