Madrid (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides)

Paperback - 20 January, 2003 - DK ADULT
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By: DK Publishing
ISBN: 0789491877

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About this book

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive, engrossing, and just plain fun-to-read guidebook than the Eyewitness Travel Guide: Madrid. Known for their eye-catching design, the Eyewitness city guides are practically spilling over with all sorts of useful information, and the Madrid version is no different. You'll find three-dimensional drawings, floor plans, and detailed neighborhood maps, as well as timelines and charts. There's even a map of the Metro. Broken down into four sections--"Introducing Madrid," "Madrid Area by Area," "Traveller's Needs," and "Survival Guide"--this book provides a complete picture of the city. Readers will especially love the hundreds of color photos showing everything from the city's famous plazas to a pitcher of sangria; the street-by-street illustrated city walks (Old Madrid, which takes in the Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayer, looks especially enchanting); the room-by-room explanations of the Palacio Real and Prado Museum; and, of course, the best places for tapas (Taberna del Foro is one). By the time you're finished with this book, you may know more than the locals. --Jill Fergus

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Reviews by readers

Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!

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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.

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.

Specifics:
The guides are organized as follows:

How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
Geographical Regions
Introduction to Madrid
............Putting Madrid on the Map
............History of Madrid
............Madrid at a Glance
............Madrid Through the Year

............Madrid Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings

........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.

Madrid Sections Reviewed:
........................Old Madrid
........................Bourbon Madrid
........................Around La Castellana
........................Further Afield
........................Beyond Madrid

Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, cafes, bars
............Shopping
............Entertainment

............Outdoor activities

Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Travel Information (Getting to Madrid )
............Street Maps (Getting Around Madrid )

............General Index
............Phrase Book

Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Madrid", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Madrid thought the Year - including events, etc.

Areas with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or forums, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.

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 have used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, in most European cities, and Dorling has yet to disappoint me. I have 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 only negative with this book is that it is substantial with good quality paper, and is therefore heavier than other travel books.

Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. 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. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.

An attractive guide, but could be more useful.

I spent two days in Madrid in November 2002 with this guidebook. I found it to be well-organized and readable, with photos accompanying the text. With this guide, it didn't take long to gain a basic understanding of the history of the city and the different neighborhoods. The restaurant listings were particularly helpful.

There were two downsides, in my opinion. One is that there is no pull-out map. The map pages are integrated with the rest of the book. Second, the prices in the book are given in pesetas, not in Euros. I found that hotels, restaurants, etc. were all quoting prices in Euros, making the guidebook slightly less user-friendly. Still, the printed prices seemed to give a good idea of relative cost.

Overall, a good guidebook, but be sure to pick up a map when you arrive in Madrid.

Good, but with limitations

I didn't pay close attention to the description of this product before I purchased it. It truly is simply a listing of the Top 10 attractions, restaurants, etc. There is good information in it, but I was a little disappointed. Had I browsed this book in a "real" book store before I'd purchased it, I would probably NOT have chosen to buy it.

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