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The Blue Guide is a first-class travel guide to Bulgaria. The Blue Guide series does not focus on hotel and restaurant infromation but rather provides detailed information on history, architecture, culture, and geography. That is what the Blue Guide does, and it does it better than anyone else. I recommend the guide be used in concert with another guide such as one of the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide series for hotel and restaruant information.
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.
The only things that were useful to me in this book were the maps, and even they were out of date.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.
