Eyewitness Travel Guide to Spain

Deni Bown

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive, engrossing and just plain fun-to-read guidebook than the Eyewitness Travel Guide: Spain. Spilling over with all sorts of useful information for the traveler, you'll find three-dimensional drawings, floor plans, and detailed neighborhood maps, as well as timelines and charts, and even a map of the Metro. Broken into sections including "Introducing Spain," "Region by Region" (covering major cities and areas like Madrid, Barcelona, Basque Country, Andalusia, and the Balearic and Canary islands), "Traveler's Needs," and "Survival Guide," the guide paints a complete picture of the country. Readers will especially love the hundreds of color photos of everything from famous plazas to pitchers of sangria. You'll also find street-by-street illustrated city walks (Old Madrid, which takes in the Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayer, looks especially enchanting), the best paradors, and, of course, tapas bars. --Jill Fergus

1 An essential guide for exploring/living in Spain
A family member gave me the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Spain as a bon voyage gift, and it has proved an essential guide on what to see, do, and eat in Spain. As someone who will be spending a bit of time in northern Spain (four months), the Eyewitness Guide has proved invaluable on excursions to nearby cities (including Madrid). Since Spain is full of thousands of monuments, churches and cathedrals, bullrings (for those who, like me, oppose the inherent cruelty of bullfights and animal abuse in Spain, one can always appreciate the architecture of famous bullrings), museums, palaces, monasteries and other places of interest, the Eyewitness Guide gives you the best of the best, with brief synopses, maps and must-sees in museums, street maps, photos, historical backgrounds and more.

I especially appreciated the features for each region, such as wildlife, wines, and regional food specialties. I plan to visit many different cities and regions while I am in Spain, and now I have ideas on what I want to spend my time on. There is also a handy survival guide including phoning in Spain, police, shopping suggestions, size charts for clothing and shoes and monetary conversions between Euros and pesetas.

I found this book most useful in conjunction with the "Let's Go: Spain, Portugal and Morocco" guide that was given to me by a friend before I left. My only grudge with the Eyewitness guide is its lack of lodging information--there are few hotels (and no hostels) listed, even though there are upwards of twenty in my town (Burgos). The "Let's Go" guide is more useful for (cheap) lodging information, and the hostel I stayed at in Madrid (Hostal Aguilar, Calle San Jeronimo 32, second floor) was an unbeatable bargain, as well as spotlessly clean with a private bath and centrally located. If I had used the Eyewitness guide I would have easily spent much more. Also, there are no maps for smaller cities, something which the "Let's Go" guide provides. But finding maps in Spanish towns is generally not difficult as there are tourism offices in nearly every town that provide maps free of charge.

Overall, the Eyewitness guide is well worth the price, and the colourful photos, excellent research and interesting side notes make exploring Spain a pleasure. Extremely useful for the traveller or for those who are working and living in Spain.

2 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.

But, 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.

Summary Negative:

The country books are too general to really satisfy all your needs in any given location. So, if your entire trip is spent in Malega, for example, you will also want to get the specific guide for that city (but, the Barcelona Section is fairly good)

Guide Specifics:

The guides are organized as follows:

How to use this guide
Introduction to Spain
............Putting Spain on the Map
............Portrait of Spain
............Spain Through the Year
............History of Spain

Northern Spain
............Introducing Northern Spain
............Galicia

............Asturias and Cantabria
............Basque CountryNorthern Spain

Barcelona
............Introducing Barcelona
............Old Town
............Eixample
............Montjuic
............Farther Afield
............Barcelona Street Finder Index
............Shopping and Entertainment in Barcelona

Spain by Region
............Eastern Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Madrid
........................Introducing Madrid

........................Bourbon Madrid
........................Farther Afield
........................Madrid Street Finder
........................Shopping and Entertainment in Madrid
........................Madrid Province

............Central Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Southern Spain
........................Specific Cities / Towns
............Spain's Islands
........................Specific Cities / Towns

Travelers Needs
............Hotels
............Restaurants

Survival Information
............Practical Info.
........................Police, safety, buses, trains, etc.
............Travel Info.
........................Maps, tours, currency, etc.
............General Index
............Phrase Book

Discussion:
The book begins with "A Portrait of Spain", including a complete map, a review of Spain, it's history, and Spain's History (very interesting), and Spain thought the Year - including events, etc.,

Region with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of Cities / Towns, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.

The Barcelona section is excellent. However, is not necessarily worth the whole book (and its weight) if you are only traveling to Barcelona. Personally, I find Barcelona is one of the finest European cities. I would go there for any reason, anytime. And, many of our corporate clinets and their European attendees feel the same way. While in Barcelona, don't miss Sitges - it's a quaint and quiet little town Southwest of Barcelona ... just a 20 minute ride from the airport. (Actually, this ride from the airport is shorter than if you go to Barcelona in traffic!)

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 used the reviews on resorts, hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and 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 country-wide guides are by definition more general than the specific city guides. So, if you are only going to Barcelona, get the specific "Barcelona" guide (another great guide). If you decide to get the "Spain" guide for your 3, or 4 city tour of Spain, understand that this guide may be a little to general for all your local travel needs. But, of the "country" guides, this one is thorough.

Conclusion:
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.

Happy Travels!

3 A Wonderful Travel Guide Book
I thought this book a great teacher to me in my desire to travel to Spain. I am looking forward to my trip and feel that because of information from the book I chose wisely. Candace Seviss

4 Eyewitness trvel guides are the best period
This series of books are simply the best for the following needs
1)You want to know if some attraction is worth seeing. These books show you interior shots of the attraction, floor plans etc.
2)You want a map of the city pointing out these places.

I used these guides when I went to Spain and Hawaii in the last year. They really are great. Particularly if you want to know if you should schedule something in vaca time or not. They also provide a glimps into local customs and dining ... much more than any other guide. These guides though are not so good for choosing a hotel since they normally only give a small blurb on selected hotels and not much detailed information.

All in all these are the prefered books to have for checking out the highlights of your destination. I've often torn pages out to keep with me on my trips.

5 Really sorry I bought it
This is the heaviest book I own. I like to travel light, and wouldn't consider packing this book. It is full of detail that you would use while traveling, but not very interesting to read in advance and get a general sense of what to expect. I will have to order another guide - and donate this to the Friends of the Library Sale.

6 great intro to Spain - educational book, not just guidebook
I bought this book not as a travel guide (although we did use it to find out which major sites not to miss in unknown cities) as a way to introduce Spain to my parents and to my students. It is an extremely visually-attractive book; you get the urge to pick it up and discover something. It also has a detailed but manageable-length history section at the beginning. I recommend it to any Spanish teacher (or student).

A colleague of mine who is from Spain and is writing a Spanish Civ. textbook even recommends this book.

7 Very helpful on my trip to Southern Spain
This was an extremely helpful guide during my vacation in Southern Spain. Lavishly illustrated and well organized, it helped us find some of the more remote vacation spots. I ended up reading it cover to cover, just to learn more about Spanish culture. The series must be popular because we ran into other tourists, from France and Italy, who had the same guidebook in different languages. My only complaint is that the authors seemed to focus too much on architectural showpieces, rather than on historical or literary sites.

8 Pretty pictures, but not suitable for all travelers
Just got back from Spain where I put this guide to the test in several cities. I decided to try this instead of the usual guides I used in the past (Let's Go, Rick Steve's, Lonely Planet, Fodor's, etc.). My overall verdict is that this book is good for a certain type of traveler on a certain type of trip, but can't be leaned on too heavily as a reference guide. It handles a few things better than other guides, but doesn't have enough information for the budget travelers dependent on their guidebooks to make it from place to place.

What it does better than other guides is provide beautiful color photographs and cutaway diagrams of major sights, like cathedrals and museums and select neighborhood in major cities. Unlike other guidebooks, the photos are presented on thick glossy paper, providing extremely vivid coloring. I leaned heavily on the city-map of Madrid to find my way to the right metro stations for all the sites. Each chapter on a town had a fairly good list of sites to see along with operating hours, and each one was keyed to a map so I could easily navigate to the site. The subway map of Madrid inside the back cover was super useful. It has a list of restaurants and hotels for various cities all in two color-coded appendixes at the back of the book, and the price ranges listed are wider than other guidebooks like Let's Go or Rick Steve's, which focus on hostels and budget hotels. You'll find five star hotels and "jacket and tie required" restaurants in the Eyewitness Guide.

But many travelers will find the book problematic. First, it has very little information on how to get from one destination to another. Rick Steve's and Let's Go, which my travel companions brought, were much better on this front. Those two books saved me countless trips to tourist offices and train/bus stations and were worth buying for that reason alone. The Eyewitness guide just have had general travel info as an appendix in the back of the book, but very little on travel from one particular town to another. Not a problem if your travel plans were made out all in advance, but a fatal flaw if you're figuring it out as you go.

A few other problems: the high quality paper means the books is much heavier than other guidebooks. Walking around in the heat, I didn't appreciate having to lug it in my backpack. Also, the restaurant and hotel listings are pretty skimpy--just two pages of restaurants and hotels for Madrid?! Other guidebooks are more complete--Eyewitness tends to focus on a few restaurants and hotels across a broad price range, though I have no idea how those particular ones were selected.

In summary, I think this guidebook works great if you have all your travel between towns and lodging in each destination set ahead of time. This guidebook will help you pick out a few sites to visit in each area and provide great photos for each. For the budget traveler/backpacker who needs to figure out how to get from one town to the next on the fly, Let's Go or Rick Steve's or a book like that is essential. Next time I travel, I'm buying Let's Go before the trip, and if I'm in a particular town for a while, I might pick up an Eyewitness Guide once I'm in town and then toss it out once I leave. Or perhaps buy one at home and tear out the relevant pages to bring along. They make Eyewitness Guides for particular destinations, like Madrid only, which might be a better value than the entire Spain guide if you're only hitting a few spots.

9 A WORTHLESS (AND HEAVY) BOOK TO CARRY
I've done a lot of travelling in my years, and this was my first trip using an "Eyewitness" guide. This book was worthless, and was twice as heavy as any other to carry. Sure, the pictures and diagrams are clever. But when you land at the airport in Madrid or one of the several train stations in Barcelona, you will have absolutely no help from this book how to get where you need to go. And when I took a road trip around Andalucia, ALL of the highways were wrongly numbered and poorly drawn. This is the least practical book you could buy. (But the most expensive.) And you won't believe how much it weighs. Only buy this if you want to pretend you were there and need a lot of pictures.

10 Very useful guide!
I purchased this book when I knew I was taking a trip to Spain but I was trying to find a way to decide between Madrid and Barcelona. I found all the information extremely useful. Eventually we decided to go to Barcelona and took the guide along since it seemed as though we would refer to it often.

This book had a section devoted to Barcelona and separate areas devoted to the hotels and restaurants. I particularily liked the fact that they devoted a whole 2 page spread to a particular site to see with close up photos and some detailed explanations. After visitng a few of the sites, I came back to the hotel room and re-read the description and it gave me a greater appreciation for what I had seen. Also, the hand drawn 3D maps were very useful for me as a very visual person because they helped me gain a greater sense of direction. The descriptions of the various points of interest were very helpful and contained a lot of information along with street address, phone number and hours of operation. At the end of the section were a few maps which were also very simple and had various important landmarks throughout.

Walking down the stretch of road in Barcelona known as La Rambla, you would see many newspaper stands and they always had Eyewitness guidebooks to sell as well. Also, I saw many tourists carrying this book as their guide in many different languages. Since this book was all about all of Spain, I would probably recommend picking up the specific Barcelona and Catalonia edition if you are interested in visiting the particular area. But all in all I really enjoyed this book. It was definately stronger in the attractions and things to see area and a bit weaker with hotel and restaurant recommendations.

11 It has EVERYTHING you need
What a marvelous travel guide! I bought several others, but none are even close to being as good as this one. The practical travel tips are priceless. I've been traveling for years and I really recommend this book. One drawback - gosh, it's heavy for a traveler like me, who likes to travel with the smallest amount of baggage possible. But, I'll just have to take less clothes, I guess--I'm not leaving this at home!

12 Eyewitness Travel Guides Spain
This book has to be one of the best I have used, with 3 D maps giving you the feel of what the building looks like is better than an address.

13 Ridiculously heavy.
If you are like me and:

1. Are backpacking.

2. Don't like extra weight.

3. Don't care about pictures.

4. Dislike cutsie, snobbish writing style for the +45 crowd.

then don't buy this book. However, the low end hotels that the book recomends were very nice, clean, and it had more than a few restaurants as well.

The book was written for the **budgetless traveller**, those travelling on busses or renting cars, etc. This wasn't made for those that are actually carrying their stuff themselves for any extended period of time.

14 A very good book.
My wife is from Spain and I have spend lots of time there. I have many guide books, but when I saw this book, I knew I needed it. It has very good discussions on history, art, food, etc. The maps and cut-away diagrams are very good and informative. It not only gives info on the main cities but also points out many of the out-of-the-way places that really add to a visit to Spain.

15 A good book, but buyers beware!
This eyewitness book is great. The city and attraction 3-d maps are wonderful. MAKE SURE TO CHECK THE PUBLISHING DATE before purchasing. Although this appears to be the most recent edition, it is not. Check to make sure you have the copy with the latest 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 revisions. Overall, even though a little out dated, a wonderful book.

16 This is a must have travel book for Spain
During a recent trip to Spain with four friends, all with different travel books, we decided that this is a must-have for travel. While I wouldn't rely on this as your sole travel book, I found it worked well with another guide such as Lonely Planet. The pictures were very helpful (if you have limited time and want to figure out what to see), as was the easy access metro maps. However, the restaurant guides and hotel listings were a bit limited as were some of the maps.

17 Eyewitness Travel Guides, SPAIN
This book has amazing pictures. It shows and talks about food, drinks, shopping, historical sights, museums, beatiful areas, and the hot spots of all the different regions of Spain. Now, I can't wait for my trip to Spain this summer!

18 the best tour guide book
I studied in Madrid for 2 months this summer and lived with 4 other girls that I met through the university. Needless to say we all managed to have different tour books. But this one was best of all. Everyone always wanted to borrow mine because it has great pictures and helpful info like metro stops. I took it everywhere. When we all started packing to go home, no one could fit their tour books and they gladly left them behind. But not me! I'm holding on to this one!

19 Modern & lively - not what you'd expect from a usual guide!!
My husband and I took a 15-day tour of Barcelona and Andalucia this summer and although we had no guide or anything, we found it was very enjoyable to go around places using this particular guide. Great photos, modern layout and trustworthy suggestions as regards restaurants and hotels. The city maps were a bit confusing, esp. in places like Jewish quarters but we found our way out quite easily. Loved the food pictures - very enlightening!!!

20 Beautiful info packed book.
This book is wonderful and visually exciting! Its color pictures, maps and legends to historical sites make it a "must have" for travel to Spain, but what is even more exciting is the timeline detailing the country's history, from being part of the Roman Empire to Moorish influence, right up to present day. Among the myriad of covered topics, there are souvenir and shopping recommendations, information on medical care, a calender of festivals, and even a weather guide. The indespensible information and the sheer beauty of the book make it a real page turner. You're not bogged down by too long explanations or endless rambling. It whets your appetite for the culture and doesn't let you down. Going to Spain? Don't go without this book.

21 Eyewitness Travel Guides are the best!
As a Canadian living in Switzerland, I find myself travelling all over Europe and I always buy the Eyewitness Travel Guides! They are the bests travel Guides available. The one on Spain is very complete...even the smallest villages are included! GREAT GUIDE!

22 a great overview with wonderful pictures & maps
obviously, a book small enough to stick in your backpack is going to short change one's favorite places, but for the most part, this book was a lifesaver!

the pictures of food, money, road signs, the police, etc. were invaluable. it would be great to expand the road sign section. i'm pretty sure i know what "bandas sonoras" means, but it took awhile to puzzle out without a dictionary.

we traveled to spain during holy week 1999. we used other books to help determine our itinerary, and used this book to help find the places. the city center maps were great, although, again, one wished for more detail.

i wouldn't hesitate to order other eyewitness guides for any and all destinations.

23 Absolutely perfect book i would recomend to everyone
Has everything in it to make your traveling there easy and interesting. Great pictures and maps (I would add some more of them and improve existing ones, but it's Ok in general).

24 BEST CULTURAL & REGIONAL DESCRIPTIONS WITH FINE PHOTOGRAPHY
This travel guide is exceptionally complete in describing the historical underpinnings of the spanish culture, and subsequently expanding upon this with graphic examples of people, places, architecture and art. The regional guide to restaurants and lodging is adequate, but rather incomplete and otherwise would have received a 5 star recommendation.