| Product: |
The Rough Guide to Europe |
| Date: |
11/08/00 (24 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Important stuff in bold type makes it easy to see
Disadvantages: Lack of detail on maps
This chunky book resembles a Bible in size, but I'm afraid it didn't quite reach biblical standards for me on my interrailing trip around Europe. Handy, yes... pretty pictures, yes... but it gets a definite "could do better".
One of the main problems we found was that it gives the street names of all sorts of important places (e.g. youth hostels, campsites etc.), but the maps it provides are not detailed enough to include most of these streets! Thus you can end up getting terribly lost if you can't find a public map. It also tends to give distances in terms of how long it takes by bus, metro etc- which means nothing to those determined to save money by walking.
Obviously we can't expect such a huge book to be 100% accurate and updated all the time, but we did spot things which really could have done with being updated. For example, it tells us that the beach in Valencia, Spain, is polluted- but when we went there it was gorgeous. We asked the people we were with about it, and they said it had all been cleaned up several years ago. Another example is that the telephone numbers in the Czech Republic have changed recently, so we couldn't phone in advance to book accomodation (we had to buy a booklet of Youth hostel details while we were in Germany).
All that said, however, it was an indispensable book. You can tell by the spicy peanut stains, beer marks and so on that we used it a lot. For the most part, the descriptions of the towns and cities give you an accurate overview (although the book did make Ljubljana sound a bit dull, and I thought it was the best place ever- but that's subjective) and the practical information about planning, postal systems, trains and so on is great. To be honest, though, if you're after a book of this nature buy either the Lonely Planet Guide or the Let's Go Guide. Almost everyone we met had these and they seemed a lot better.
Summary:
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