<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: in depth guide to a wonderful place without many signs!
Review: Havana is a fantastic city with wonderful people living through a very difficult economic period. Existing outside the world of international chains and franchises, travelers cannot rely on the normal signposts, advertisements, and guides to help them find even the most basic services. Christopher Baker's book is a great resrouce to anyone travelling to this incredible place. He packs in not only information on where to stay and eat, but also explains a myriad of subtleties that are not immedately apparant. As a bonus, his book also provides much in the way of background on the history and culture of Havana. If you are considering a trip to Cuba, don't go without this book.
Rating:
Summary: in depth guide to a wonderful place without many signs!
Review: Havana is a fantastic city with wonderful people living through a very difficult economic period. Existing outside the world of international chains and franchises, travelers cannot rely on the normal signposts, advertisements, and guides to help them find even the most basic services. Christopher Baker's book is a great resrouce to anyone travelling to this incredible place. He packs in not only information on where to stay and eat, but also explains a myriad of subtleties that are not immedately apparant. As a bonus, his book also provides much in the way of background on the history and culture of Havana. If you are considering a trip to Cuba, don't go without this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A travel book to discourage travel.
Review: Having just returned from Havana I find this book to be the most disingenuous exercise I can remember. While there are certainly facts and history aplenty, the author, who must work for a certain company, makes Havana as repugnant as possible. The blockade, engineered by fanatics who fled Havana for Miami to avoid prosecution or persecution these forty years ago continues without any sane reason. There is a refreshing intellectual life. Civil liberties are no more endangered in Havana than in Alabama or the Bronx. US citizens are now required by the Bush administration to have exit visas from the US issued by the Treasury Department. A nurse told me that Cuba is a third world country. I told her that a Third World country wouldn't have universal health care, no illiteracy, no threat of AIDS, no perinatal mortality, and a system of preventative medicine to be envied. No, I told her, it is I who live in a third world country.
In his litany of deficiencies the author fails to compare anything. Streets are bad. Compared to Baltimore? Slums. Compared to Newark? Poor people. Compared to Mississippi?
You should buy this book (if you are going to Havana) for its wealth of history and useful facts. Do not allow the authors grumpy interpretations influence how you feel about Havana or the Cuban people.
Rating:
Summary: All you need for Havana
Review: I also just got back from Cuba, and I couldn't disagree with Cecil Fox's January 17 review more. Baker is a very good writer who's done extensive research, and the book is pleasurable to read. He makes his love for the place palpable without sparing the reader the frustration a visitor/observer often feels. Other travelers staying where I did ended up borrowing this guidebook for its richness of detail and background that theirs (Lonely Planet) lacked. I liked it so much I'm buying another- I had to leave my copy on the plane as we were without licenses, and afraid of tipping-off US immigration.
That said, I wish it were updated a bit. The million bicycles Baker writes about aren't there en masse anymore, and Dulce Maria's was fun but not the throbbing delirium he paints. All in all though, I'll buy it again.
Rating:
Summary: A must for Cuba travel
Review: I have been all over Cuba, and Baker was an excellent guide. No other book goes into the detail for off the beaten track travel.
Rating:
Summary: Travel with Chris
Review: I spent a month in Cuba guided by this book. Not only does it have great information for the essential activities like eating and sleeping, but it has an incredible amount of information about the country. If you find yourself without a book to read while traveling, Chris' guide book is great for educational reading material - packed with historical and cultural reading. At first I scoffed at his tendency to flowery writing - "with water as warm as bedtime milk" but after growing accostomed to his style we began to think of Chris as our travel buddy and the other travel books brought by my travel partners were soon buried deep in backpacks - Chris' book was the only one we needed.
Rating:
Summary: the one and only cubaguide
Review: never go to cuba before reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: If you are going to visit JUST Havana, get this guide.
Review: When I was in Havana (3/2001) I brought a stack of guide books to help me navigate around Cuba (and especially Havana). The top award goes to the prolific author Christopher Baker, who wrote "Havana Handbook" and "Cuba" (both are published by Avalon Travel). In Havana Handbook Christopher Baker gives you a solid introduction to Havana and Cuba, a good, but basic, general travel information section. His two books have the best accommodations, restaurants and sights-to-see reviews and recommendations available today. He also provides excellent tables & lists of pertinent subjects, good black & white photos, scores of side bar topics that are full of informative caveats, and the beginning of web site and Internet addresses. The only improvement I can recommend to Avalon Travel and Christopher Baker (are you listening?) would be more, much more, email addresses (especially for the hotels) additional online sources and additional maps (i.e., Baker recommends three great walking tours through Havana and these need maps). However, I have reviewed other Moon Handbooks and the Havana Handbook's maps and scattered inclusions of online resources are a real improvement over other Moon Handbooks. So, if you are going to visit JUST Havana, and you don't want to cart around Christopher Baker's definitive, 827 page "Cuba" (Highly Recommended - see review), then this 368-page guidebook is very good and reliable choice. BUT, for three dollars more I would buy Christopher Baker's "Cuba". Regardless Christopher Baker has written a tour guide unmatched by any other Cuba guide book. Recommended
<< 1 >>
|
