Blue Guide Turkey, Third Edition

• Paperback - March, 2001 - W. W. Norton & Company
• Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks
• By: Bernard McDonagh
• ISBN: 0393321371

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Reviews by readers

Not for every traveler to Turkey....but

We returned in Feb 2003 after 3 months of independent travel in Turkey. We were there mostly to visit archeological sites and ruins, and we traveled with several other books. Nothing, however approached the exhaustive, invaluable and often overwhelming information that the Blue Guide provided us with.

There are many guidebooks that provide basic information on accomodations/restaurants/etc in TK for the casual tourist who will primarily be visiting Ephesus and the other major sites on the Aegean Coast of Turkey. There any book will do, and if you are traveling with a TK licensed guide this is one of the books that they will have had to master in the grueling University program that allows them to become licensed tour guides.

But if your interest in Asia Minor takes you even slightly off the well-trodden path, the Blue Guide is indispensible. I can't imagine understanding places like Bo�azkale,Seleucia, Leto�n, Xanthos,Iassos,Miletus, Stranoniceia without either this book or a licensed guide.

There is often little in the way of informational signage at the important yet lesser visited sites, and compared to other countries ,there is little published information available in book form at the sites other than glossy tourist-photo books.

I can not recommend the Blue Guide too highly to the specialist visitor to Turkeys rich archeological past.

A good guide book

After spending a month of traveling through Turkey visiting archaeological sites, ruins and museums, I found this book to be helpful since there was little I knew of the specifics of the history of the sites to which I was visiting. And yet, some of the more specialist historians and classicists with whom I was traveling found many, many errors in the book.

Basically, if you are looking for a wealth of information on the archaeological and historical aspects of Turkey this is the book for you. However, be careful as you read and do a little extra work if you are using it for research. It is a guide book after all and excels at that purpose.

Recommended for the typical visitor to Turkey.

Very Specialized

The "Blue Guide" is not a guidebook in the "Eat at Dogan's, sleep at Mustafa's" sense, although a bit of that (dated) information is featured. Rather, it is an exhaustive compilation of data regarding the historical sites of Turkey, usually with accompanying maps. On our last trip, we carried it and the Lonely Planet guide, and found that the LP guide was, as you'd expect, more useful for travel logistics, but was surprisingly also about as good for site information. This is because the Blue Guide's descriptions are often taken verbatim from official tourist information that's generally provided free at the sites. As a result of our experience, I'd go with just the LP another time.
If you're going to Istanbul, however, be aware that the Blue Guide to Istanbul is outstanding. It has excellent walking tours that make every step through the Old Town meaningful, and excellent maps as well.
The Blue Guide to Turkey makes a good read at home to plan before you go, and is a good reference when you return, but I wouldn't pack it along again if I had access to the Lonely Planet Guide.

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