Eyewitness Travel Guide to Europe

DK Travel Writers

1 I Compare and Rate Six Western Europe Travel Guides.
I have chosen to rate 6 guides for Europe. I think there are a variety of guides. In general there are four "layers" of detail in the books on the market. There are the (1) Europe guides (reviewed here), (2) the single country guides, (3) the city guides and then (4) a variety of specialty guides such as Eurail rail guides, hiking, budget Europe, camping, restaurants, wine country, mountains, gay and lesbian guides, etc. At my bookstore there are 3 large racks of books on Europe. I have selected 6 of what seems to be the best selling guides or guides that I thought might be of general interest, and gave them my own personal ranking - just for category (1) - Europe overview. Five are very popular, one less so.

What I am looking for is a quick overview - not every tiny detail. Europe is too big and you should by a guide on France if you are going mainly to France. I think the books with photos are better since they allow you to get a better idea of the places that you might want to visit - while you plan the trip. A picture is worth 1000 words. So one might want to buy the guide before calling a travel agent.

First Choice - Good Pick

Eyewitness Europe by DK - $21.

It is 800 pages long and ranks about 11,400 on the Amazon.com sales ranking. It has all the basic stuff such as maps, food guides, accommodations, places to see, travel tips, culture, museums, history, etc. plus it has outstanding visuals. Many excellent color photos and maps. It is a good introduction and overview and makes for a beautiful souvenir. Just an outstanding and beautiful book.

Second Choice - Good Pick.

Michelin The Green Guide - Europe, 2e - $14.

This is not a popular book on Amazon.com. It rates a distant 344,544 on the sales rank and is just 540 pages long. But is very much like the DK guide. It gives an excellent overview and introduction with many photos. It is excellent for planning a trip and it is not a big book. It is a well made book with a tough and durable cover, easy to carry 5 x 9" x 0.9" thick and with lots of detail, many maps and photos. Some of the other guides are 1.85" thick.

Tied For Third - Okay Not Great

Lonely Planet Western Europe Sixth Edition ($19.59) and Lets Go 2004:Europe ($17.49)

These two are more general books with lots of text and maps. In many ways these books are similar but the latter book covers more countries. The first is 1150 pages and ranks 7,246 in Amazon.com sales, while the second book is just under 1100 pages and ranks 3,173 in sales, and is one of the more popular guides. These books include lots of detail - but unfortunately with just a limited number of photos. These two books have more detail than the first two books - but almost no photos in comparison. For myself I would like to have more photos, and even with 1100 pages one will have to buy a country book so skip these thick heavy books - I would buy one of the shorter books above (DK or Michelin) plus a country book such as Eyewitness France or Michelin Guide France etc. Lonely Planet has a series including the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe similar to this western Europe version. Both books are very thick close to 2" thick. In theory you could buy three Europe guides from Lonely Planet.

Fourth Place - Skip This Book

Rick Steve's Best of Europe 2004 - $17.47

This book uses an informal approach written by one person - Rick Steve - to take you through some of the more interesting places in Europe. The way I view this book is that it is like sitting down with a friend and he lays out the key things to see and do and then makes hand sketches of different cities etc. Having said that, the book is detailed and long - being 1200 pages long and ranks 5,352. on theAmazon.com sales ranking.

The book contains a lot of text description of interesting things to see with hand sketches and hand drawn maps to give a friendly feel - all in black and white. It includes walking tours with comments plus places to eat and hotels. It does not contain a lot of maps or any photos. He does not present lists of accommodations and restaurants. He pre-screens those and gives just a limited selection on where to stay and where to dine. There is definitely some novelty factor in the presentation. Also it is another thick book.

Fifth and Last - Does Not Compete

Frommer Europe 2004 - $16.09

This is a "conventional" travel book that covers most of Europe in 1070 pages and ranks 8,361 on the Amazon.com sales ranking. As a bonus it includes a Eurail map that detached from the back cover. The book is written by a team of authors (committee).

It is a guide to Europe. It does not plan your trip but rather goes from places to places in a formula approach giving a summary of things to see, a local map, and it lists places of interest, some history, restaurants, entertainment, and accommodations. It is a comprehensive approach - somewhat - formal and lacks any photos, i.e.: no photos, just text and some maps. That is why I rate it last. Thick but mainly just text. It is similar but not as good as the third ranking pair.

My humble opinion. Jack in Toronto

2 Just Great Travel Books.
I bought my first book in Stockholm and since then I have been hooked on this series Eyewitness Travel and use them for many different regions, countries, and cities.

The reason they are so good is because of the excellent photography plus cutaway views of famous buildings. The photos just jump out of the pages. Once you get home the book is an excellent souvenir to refresh your memory. I have bought at least a dozen, my favorite being Prague and Stockholm because they are unusual cities.

The books have maps, descriptions of museums, castles, well know landmarks, plus it includes cultural and historical summaries and gives time lines of historical events. Just an excellent book.

This is one of the largest in the series being 800 pages long. It does not cover everything but it is good. I make hotel reservations on the web and use this to fill in the gaps.

Jack in Toronto

3 Going to Europe? Get this book!
If you're already a fan of the Eyewitness Travel Guide series, you know what to expect from this book. If this is your first time, let me tell you you'll be amazed with how great and how useful this book is.

This particular guide summarizes the contents of over 20 other books by DK, including information for 20 countries in total, organized in the following way:
- The British Isles (Great Britain & Ireland)
- France and the low countries (France, Belgium, Luxembourg & The Netherlands)
- The Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal)
- Italy and Greece
- Germany, Austria and Switzerland
- Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Finland)
- Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary & Poland).

This guide contains, for every country, information regarding sites to visit, hotels, restaurants, shopping, museums, travel info (how tos for travelling by train, bus, car, metro, etc). Worthy of notice are their trademark cutaways of castles and churches, maps and street-by-street graphics.

The only drawback is that since it includes information on so many countries, some of it might not have the detail you'd expect. For example, the France section has only 73 pages, while the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Paris (another book from DK) has over 350 pages on Paris alone!

A phenomenal guide if you're planning on visiting many countries on one trip, but if you intend to dedicate more time to just a couple, you'd be better off getting the specific country/city guides.

4 Great travel guide to Europe!
This book is realy great for everybody who likes to travel Europe. The combination of good pictures, illustration and texts is perfect. You get a good overall view for the most important sights, places, cities and countries in Europe and also a bit of historical information. As a European who already traveled a bit I still could find a lot of inspiration to more interesting places to go. Thank a lot to Eyewitness Travel for there great books!

5 Helpful guide on tours through Europe
I recently took a backpack trip through Europe, which lasted close to a month; before heading out there I went through a few guidebooks and at that moment this one appealed the most. I cannot say if it was the presentation with the colored photographs; maps of the cities with visitor information or that I was just to plain sick of spending time searching for a guide book to take me though my journey. Nonetheless I am quite pleased that I took this guide with me. I had planned initially to visit a friend in Netherlands and spend some time scrolling through the cities; I left my guide there to my host; but off and on I would reference the book with places I visited; I must admit that this book covered all the places. Now of course I personally feel the best way to visit a place is to have some one show you around as like any other travel guide will not detail the places where the locals would head over to; like the bars, restraunts and night clubs. My visit from here lead me to Paris; it hit me with all its charm and glamour; here too I was fortunate to be taken around by friends. The real use of the guide came when I went on a solo journey to Belgium Austria and Italy. I found this guide an immense source of information. On my way to the city mostly by trains; I found the chance to orient myself and somewhat have a time frame as to how long I would stay in each city. I found that even though the book has information about hotels and hostels but at the train station's Hotel Guides; I was always able to get better deals. Pretty much I carried this heavy 800 pages book with me where ever I went.

Even though this book provides immense information I would highly recommend getting additional reference books on cities, which are known, for immense sightseeing and historical attractions. One such place where the guide fell short was Florence; even tough it has considerable information and provides all the most popular sites. It literally will take a 1000 pages to detail all the places to visit; as a comparison there are over 78 places to visit which have historical importance but the book has listed only about the best 14 of them; well visiting all the places would take a few weeks of stay in comparison to a typical 3-4 days that tourists generally spend; which is sufficient time to visit the places listed in the book. Another important place not mentioned in this test was the "Museum of Arsenal" in Vienna; here on display is the car in which duke Ferdinand traveled with in Sarajevo.

On the whole this covers only the most western countries of Europe and leaves a lot of East European countries and Turkey as well.

6 Great Guide to Europe!
I just returned from a two-week tour of Western Europe and this book was simply fantastic. Obviously you can't cover everything you could possibly do in Europe in 800 pages, but this book covered more than many of the other Europe tomes. I had this book and one other with me on my trip and this was the only book I opened the entire journey.

The best part about this book was all of the illustrations and color photographs. This book shows you what the other guides only tell you. It's hard to tell what building your looking at if you only have a written description, but with the four color illustrations in this book things are easy to identify and find. I would recommend this book to anyone taking a trip to Europe. (Plus, when you get back from your trip this book can even help you identify all those photographs you took)

7 The Major Sights in Twenty Countries - Amazing!
Yes, this is one heavy book. It is more than likely not a guide you want to carry around with you unless you intend to lose a few pounds from the extra weight in your backpack. Otherwise, it is quite a great guide for deciding where you want to take your next vacation in Europe. It is filled with color photography, illustrations and details you wil enjoy reading. It is graphically exciting and visually pleasing. Of all the guides I've seen, the Eyewitness Travel Guides are sheer brillance.

On the inside cover there is a map of Europe and then the pages are color coded so you can find the following countries: Great Britian, Ireland, France, Belgium & Luxembourge, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

So, if you wanted to find the information on France, you just turn the book sideways and look for the yellow markings on the pages. Viola, you are there. If you are dreaming about visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or want to go see the Hall of Mirrors at the Chateau de Versailles, may I say...they are worth a plane ticket to France. Finding a bottle of Huile D' Olive in the South of France is also something you won't soon forget.

There is also a guide to Europe's Rail Network and the Index is perfect.

After you look through the main spots to visit in each country, there is a section filled with practical information: Visa Requirements and customs, tourist information, personal security issues, climate, banking, communications, directory for embassies, travel information like car rental and buses, etc. Then there is a shopping and entertainment. So where do you want to stay? There is a guide giving the hotel ratings and it is divided up by the areas you might enjoy visiting. Then, there is a guide to places to eat. While finding a restaurant just by exploring can be exciting, there is something to be said for a guide. Unless of course you happen to be traveling with someone who knows the country and I can imagine that is the best way to travel. Is there a lonely Frenchman out there who wants to show me Paris? Sigh

Just kidding, but hey, a fantasy is a fantasy.

So, think of this guide as an overview and then you can select an Eyewitness Travel Guide for the specific countries of interest. They are all excellent although on a first trip to Europe, I'd advice a guided tour so you can enjoy your trip instead of worrying about language barriers, etc.

If you go to Paris, take a tour because I would not drive there if you paid me a million bucks! The highways in Germany are also equally terrifying. Everyone is in such a hurry to get to nowhere. If you want to enjoy your vacation without as many hassles, a tour might be the way to go. There is nothing quite like being guided through the most gorgeous cities in Europe.

This guide is just the start to many adventures.

8 The Quick Trip Around Europe!
This guide is great for an overview of many of the great places in Europe - but I cannot believe anyone would consider using this as their only guide. It should be used to maybe narrow down places to visit- then more comprehensive guides should be used. I have never been a believer in those 1 and 2 days in 18 cities over 3 weeks tours. 1 or 2 days is certainly not enough time to fully appreciate and get to know any city you visit. Furthermore, this guides biggest flaw is in doesn't cover anything in central/eastern europe besides the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary! Where's Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic States, etc....? Yes, Europe is big but the countries not contained in this guide have so much to offer and certainly should not be overlooked. For example, St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe - not mentioned here!

Don't rush Europe - relax and enjoy it. Take time to get to know the people and cities. This guide can certainly help to narrow down Europe - but should certainly not be relied upon for extensive info on the many great places.

9 excellent
All Europe guides are, of necessity, a selection of the very best things to see and do in that vast continent. No one book could be comprehensive, and all Europe guides are pretty bulky and heavy. But the Eyewitness people have managed to fit an astonishing number of places into 800 pages - and their choices are always exactly right, especially for the first-time visitor. It can be hard to decide whether to go to Antwerp or Bruges or Brussels - if you only have time to go to one city in Belgium - and all the photographs and illustrations in this book, plus the informative descriptions, make it a lot easier to make up your mind. The maps alone, all in color, make it worth buying.

10 If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium
This is a condensed and abridged book covering most of Europe. It gives you the highlights of the countries of Western Europe. It is a good book if you planning a trip where you will spend a day or two in many places. Otherwise you should consider DK more comprehensive guides to a particular country, region or city. On the positive side the book covers several countries that DK does not have a guide for yet. On the down side, the only Eastern European countries covered are Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Also the book is heavy. Is the book worth the money? Only if you are taking a "buffet" tour of Europe (a little France, a little Italy, etc...).