Rating: 
Summary: Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!
Review: .
Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more!The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes. But, the really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list. Summary Negative: The country books are too general to really satisfy all your needs in any given location. So, if your entire trip is spent in Malega, for example, you will also want to get the specific guide for that city (but, the Barcelona Section is fairly good) Guide Specifics: The guides are organized as follows: How to use this guide
Introduction to Spain
............Putting Spain on the Map
............Portrait of Spain
............Spain Through the Year
............History of Spain Northern Spain
............Introducing Northern Spain
............Galicia ............Asturias and Cantabria
............Basque CountryNorthern Spain Barcelona
............Introducing Barcelona
............Old Town
............Eixample
............Montjuic
............Farther Afield
............Barcelona Street Finder Index
............Shopping and Entertainment in Barcelona Spain by Region
............Eastern Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Madrid
........................Introducing Madrid ........................Bourbon Madrid
........................Farther Afield
........................Madrid Street Finder
........................Shopping and Entertainment in Madrid
........................Madrid Province ............Central Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Southern Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Spain's Islands
........................Specific Cities / Towns Travelers Needs
............Hotels
............Restaurants Survival Information
............Practical Info.
........................Police, safety, buses, trains, etc.
............Travel Info.
........................Maps, tours, currency, etc.
............General Index
............Phrase Book Discussion:
The book begins with "A Portrait of Spain", including a complete map, a review of Spain, it's history, and Spain's History (very interesting), and Spain thought the Year - including events, etc., Region with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of Cities / Towns, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc. The Barcelona section is excellent. However, is not necessarily worth the whole book (and its weight) if you are only traveling to Barcelona. Personally, I find Barcelona is one of the finest European cities. I would go there for any reason, anytime. And, many of our corporate clinets and their European attendees feel the same way. While in Barcelona, don't miss Sitges - it's a quaint and quiet little town Southwest of Barcelona ... just a 20 minute ride from the airport. (Actually, this ride from the airport is shorter than if you go to Barcelona in traffic!) Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly. The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on resorts, hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions The books are so well thought out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages. Negative:
The country-wide guides are by definition more general than the specific city guides. So, if you are only going to Barcelona, get the specific "Barcelona" guide (another great guide). If you decide to get the "Spain" guide for your 3, or 4 city tour of Spain, understand that this guide may be a little to general for all your local travel needs. But, of the "country" guides, this one is thorough. Conclusion:
As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. Happy Travels!
Rating:
Summary: An essential guide for exploring/living in Spain
Review: A family member gave me the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Spain as a bon voyage gift, and it has proved an essential guide on what to see, do, and eat in Spain. As someone who will be spending a bit of time in northern Spain (four months), the Eyewitness Guide has proved invaluable on excursions to nearby cities (including Madrid). Since Spain is full of thousands of monuments, churches and cathedrals, bullrings (for those who, like me, oppose the inherent cruelty of bullfights and animal abuse in Spain, one can always appreciate the architecture of famous bullrings), museums, palaces, monasteries and other places of interest, the Eyewitness Guide gives you the best of the best, with brief synopses, maps and must-sees in museums, street maps, photos, historical backgrounds and more. I especially appreciated the features for each region, such as wildlife, wines, and regional food specialties. I plan to visit many different cities and regions while I am in Spain, and now I have ideas on what I want to spend my time on. There is also a handy survival guide including phoning in Spain, police, shopping suggestions, size charts for clothing and shoes and monetary conversions between Euros and pesetas. I found this book most useful in conjunction with the "Let's Go: Spain, Portugal and Morocco" guide that was given to me by a friend before I left. My only grudge with the Eyewitness guide is its lack of lodging information--there are few hotels (and no hostels) listed, even though there are upwards of twenty in my town (Burgos). The "Let's Go" guide is more useful for (cheap) lodging information, and the hostel I stayed at in Madrid (Hostal Aguilar, Calle San Jeronimo 32, second floor) was an unbeatable bargain, as well as spotlessly clean with a private bath and centrally located. If I had used the Eyewitness guide I would have easily spent much more. Also, there are no maps for smaller cities, something which the "Let's Go" guide provides. But finding maps in Spanish towns is generally not difficult as there are tourism offices in nearly every town that provide maps free of charge. Overall, the Eyewitness guide is well worth the price, and the colourful photos, excellent research and interesting side notes make exploring Spain a pleasure. Extremely useful for the traveller or for those who are working and living in Spain.
Rating:
Summary: Eyewitness Travel Guides are the best!
Review: As a Canadian living in Switzerland, I find myself travelling all over Europe and I always buy the Eyewitness Travel Guides! They are the bests travel Guides available. The one on Spain is very complete...even the smallest villages are included! GREAT GUIDE!
Rating: 
Summary: This is a must have travel book for Spain
Review: During a recent trip to Spain with four friends, all with different travel books, we decided that this is a must-have for travel. While I wouldn't rely on this as your sole travel book, I found it worked well with another guide such as Lonely Planet. The pictures were very helpful (if you have limited time and want to figure out what to see), as was the easy access metro maps. However, the restaurant guides and hotel listings were a bit limited as were some of the maps.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely perfect book i would recomend to everyone
Review: Has everything in it to make your traveling there easy and interesting. Great pictures and maps (I would add some more of them and improve existing ones, but it's Ok in general).
Rating:
Summary: great intro to Spain - educational book, not just guidebook
Review: I bought this book not as a travel guide (although we did use it to find out which major sites not to miss in unknown cities) as a way to introduce Spain to my parents and to my students. It is an extremely visually-attractive book; you get the urge to pick it up and discover something. It also has a detailed but manageable-length history section at the beginning. I recommend it to any Spanish teacher (or student). A colleague of mine who is from Spain and is writing a Spanish Civ. textbook even recommends this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful guide!
Review: I purchased this book when I knew I was taking a trip to Spain but I was trying to find a way to decide between Madrid and Barcelona. I found all the information extremely useful. Eventually we decided to go to Barcelona and took the guide along since it seemed as though we would refer to it often. This book had a section devoted to Barcelona and separate areas devoted to the hotels and restaurants. I particularily liked the fact that they devoted a whole 2 page spread to a particular site to see with close up photos and some detailed explanations. After visitng a few of the sites, I came back to the hotel room and re-read the description and it gave me a greater appreciation for what I had seen. Also, the hand drawn 3D maps were very useful for me as a very visual person because they helped me gain a greater sense of direction. The descriptions of the various points of interest were very helpful and contained a lot of information along with street address, phone number and hours of operation. At the end of the section were a few maps which were also very simple and had various important landmarks throughout. Walking down the stretch of road in Barcelona known as La Rambla, you would see many newspaper stands and they always had Eyewitness guidebooks to sell as well. Also, I saw many tourists carrying this book as their guide in many different languages. Since this book was all about all of Spain, I would probably recommend picking up the specific Barcelona and Catalonia edition if you are interested in visiting the particular area. But all in all I really enjoyed this book. It was definately stronger in the attractions and things to see area and a bit weaker with hotel and restaurant recommendations.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful guide!
Review: I purchased this book when I knew I was taking a trip to Spain but I was trying to find a way to decide between Madrid and Barcelona. I found all the information extremely useful. Eventually we decided to go to Barcelona and took the guide along since it seemed as though we would refer to it often. This book had a section devoted to Barcelona and separate areas devoted to the hotels and restaurants. I particularily liked the fact that they devoted a whole 2 page spread to a particular site to see with close up photos and some detailed explanations. After visitng a few of the sites, I came back to the hotel room and re-read the description and it gave me a greater appreciation for what I had seen. Also, the hand drawn 3D maps were very useful for me as a very visual person because they helped me gain a greater sense of direction. The descriptions of the various points of interest were very helpful and contained a lot of information along with street address, phone number and hours of operation. At the end of the section were a few maps which were also very simple and had various important landmarks throughout. Walking down the stretch of road in Barcelona known as La Rambla, you would see many newspaper stands and they always had Eyewitness guidebooks to sell as well. Also, I saw many tourists carrying this book as their guide in many different languages. Since this book was all about all of Spain, I would probably recommend picking up the specific Barcelona and Catalonia edition if you are interested in visiting the particular area. But all in all I really enjoyed this book. It was definately stronger in the attractions and things to see area and a bit weaker with hotel and restaurant recommendations.
Rating:
Summary: the best tour guide book
Review: I studied in Madrid for 2 months this summer and lived with 4 other girls that I met through the university. Needless to say we all managed to have different tour books. But this one was best of all. Everyone always wanted to borrow mine because it has great pictures and helpful info like metro stops. I took it everywhere. When we all started packing to go home, no one could fit their tour books and they gladly left them behind. But not me! I'm holding on to this one!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Travel Guide Book
Review: I thought this book a great teacher to me in my desire to travel to Spain. I am looking forward to my trip and feel that because of information from the book I chose wisely. Candace Seviss
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