5 comments about Paris to the Moon.

1. This book has been enlightening in at least one respect - I thought one had to be an upper-class English twit to be this pretentious. Gopnik, of course, is not the former, but he is most certainly the latter.
   
   To be fair, occasionally Gopnik does present a humorous nugget or a unique insight into Parisian life (though not French life; he is only a Parisophile, not a Francophile.) It's the other 95% of the book's self-indulgent prattle that is so annoying. I swear that if Gopnik thought that too many readers understood the massive amounts of French in the book, he would switch to Latin or Greek. He is not merely a name dropper, he's a word dropper.
   
   While it starts out well enough, no more than 1/2 way through the book the reader is reduced to skimming page after page of discussions about food, reports of haute couture fashion shows, and an endless series of boring reflections on his young son. Toward the end of the book Gopnik even mentions taking his 4-year old on a trip back to New York in order for the boy to be interviewed for admission to a good pre-school! What a turkey this Gopnik character is. How is he ever going to explain all this pomposity to the boy when he grows up?



2. I picked up this book for insights on the less-touristy aspects of Paris, prior to a trip my family is taking. It's a very enjoyable book, and the author's descriptions definitely have raised my anticipation level for our visit, as well as given me ideas about places for kids. Plus (as many other reviewers noted), it's a funny and charming book. As the husband of a former chef, I enjoyed his discursions about cooking, too.
   
   My one complaint comes from the occasional pretentiousness and preciousness of the author's lifestyle. How many of us could move to Paris for five years during the prime of our working lives? And how many of us could take a month's vacation to the US in the summer, or fly our kids back for two days of interviews for kindergarten? Kindergarten?
   
   The author comes from a very small slice of our society, and he both downplays this and celebrates it at different times. And I don't like it. For example, his literary allusions -- whether French, English or American -- go over my head. I'm a well-read person, but I feel as if the author is trying to show that he has a greater range than his readers. To shift from Baudelaire to the New York Knicks within a few paragraphs is trying to have it both ways -- the intellectual and the common man.



3. An interesting collection of essays about family life in Paris. Gopnik's erudite, interesting descriptions of the City of Light will delight Francophiles, although his writing is fairly pretentious and pedantic at times. Nevertheless, this book is still a worthwhile read.



4. PARIS TO THE MOON is a collection of essays by a NEW YORKER writer. Gopnik and his wife moved to Paris in 1995. When a young teen, he visited Paris in 1773. After the couple's child was born in 1994 they endeavored to fulfill Adam's desire to live in Paris while their son was still portable. The romance of Paris became the author's subject for his NEW YORKER pieces. There was no big story in France. There was a lot of peace amd prosperity in the world and a lot animosity directed toward the United States. When Adam Gopnik thinks of Paris he thinks of his wife Martha and his son Luke.
   
   French politicians engage in ostentatious displays of detachment. The Parisian government has a clutch of domaine prive apartments. In reality, most apartments in Paris are not available to rent in a market sense. It seems that one of the politicians lodged his entire family in various domaine prive apartments. French life in general is chock full of entitlements. North African immigrants, though, have no entree. The French elites have now decided that the cure for hidden deals is transparency. Gopnik describes a strike. France is a centralized country and anything that mainly affects Paris is a national event. French people deal with an event by pretending it isn't happening. (Picasso and Sartre pretended the Germans didn't occupy Paris.)
   
   The writer's son Luke enjoys the Luxembourg Gardens, even in November. Trying to join an American-style gym, the author discovers that the rhetoric, the cult of sport is absent in France. Talking about the bureaucracy takes the place of talking about sport. In France there is no retirement anxiety. People don't linke the notion of stopping to work with stopping to live as people do in the U.S. It is believed that what France needs is its own Bill Gates. It has a philosopher, Habermas, who contends that the basis for the state is the human love of arguing.
   
   The French have been obsessed with Vichy for more than twenty-five years. Thus, they did not finally confront their past during Papon's trial in Bordeaux. Explanation turns first on romanticism, next on ideological rigor, and finally on the futility of explanation. In 1997 there was an incident at the Eiffel Tower. The French draw their identity from their jobs, the Americans from what they buy. Adam Gobnik decides that couture is romantic cartoon. Yves St. Laurent is still the favorite in 1997 of the Socialists in the government. He uses opera arias to show his clothes. The new Bibliotheque Nationale, a Mitterand grand project, is, according to Gopnik, in the totalitarian Luxe style. Other transformations of cultural sites have been undertaken at the Louvre and the Bastille Opera. Jazz, loved by the French, and Impressionism, loved by the Americans, confirm the simple physical basis of powerful emotion.
   
   Alice Waters is in Paris at some point during the writer's stay. He offers to cook dinner for her and is nervous. Her ends up cooking lamb for seven hours where four would have been appropriate. It seems that the purpose of the visit of Alice Waters to Paris is to determine the feasibility of opening a restaurant at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at the Louvre. She has reconciled utopian politics with aristocratic cooking. The crucial unit of French social life is the cohort. Members of the cohort inhabit neutral places such as parks and cafes.
   
   The couple's daughter Olivia is born in Paris. Since Paris is beautiful, but France is not a life, the family returns to America. The book is both amusing and instructive.



5. This is a book for francophiles. It might be a good resource on French culture and attitudes if you will be spending an extended time traveling or working in France. But if you are looking for good literature, skip it.
   
   Should have known by just opening the cover - the first SENTENCE in the book has 9 (count 'em - NINE) commas in it. The prose is self-centered, self-conscious, and self-congratulatory.
   
   You are regaled by sentences like this one: "The lucidity of Parisian empiricism was bought at the price of the grandiosity of Parisian abstraction, and you couldn't have one without the other".
   
   Gopnik is the sort of author who thinks when he breaks a fingernail, it's significant and we need to know. You get an entire chapter devoted to a bedtime story he made up for his son, end to end.
   
   The author needs to get over himself, and the editor needs to go back to flipping burgers. Spend your valuable leisure hours reading something else!

1 comments about London (City Guide).

1. Excellent guide that helped me through London. The walks listed were particularly helpful in enabling me to make the most of my stay. I'd recommend a combination of this and a pocket sized guide by Time Out.

5 comments about Berlin (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. The book was very useful. We have used these guides in several cities and they are always informative and well arranged. My only disappointment with this one was the map section. It lacked a good overall map. Once we got on the correct page it was OK but it was cumbersome to get there.



2. This book is completely unhelpful for anyone spending time in Berlin. I've lived in Berlin in the past but wanted a new travel book to help me see all of the newer sights. Even for someone who already knows her way around the city, this book was confusing and useless. The maps are all oversimplified to the point that they won't help you find anything, and the descriptions about where things are will get you completely lost or cause you to waste a ton of time. For example, the book's recommended ways to spend particular days are absolutely impossible to do. As someone who knows Berlin, I noticed that their sample schedules told people to go to places that are sometimes more than an hour and a half apart by public transportation and then travel back along the same route to get to another sight or activity. I felt like this was a waste of money, and I should have gotten the Lonely Planet or Let's Go guilde.



3. The pictures are wonderful, but the maps are inadequate and the information is inconsistent. This guide would benefit from the attention of a careful editor.
   
   MAPS: one of the most likely places you'll end up is the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) - there's even an special detail map for that area (map pages 15 & 16) - but crucial street names are missing. You can find the street signs but not where you are on the map! So, now you're lost, even with a map.
   
   INCONSISTENT INFORMATION: Is KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) the second biggest department store (page 11) or the largest one in Europe (p. 155)? And, out of curiosity, if the second, which one is first? The Oren Restaurant is mentioned on page 102 with a reference to page 238, where it does not appear. It should have been removed in both places, since it has been out of business for a few years. The Kadima Restaurant now occupies that space. Oren was vegetarian and kosher; Kadima is neither. The Borchardt Restaurant (page 236) is misspelled as Borchadt. On page 78 the Akademie der Künste has a reference to page 67 that should be to page 133. There must be many more such slips.
   
   So, if you're relying on this book to guide you around Berlin, be prepared for some frustration.



4. It's an astonished travel guide. Well printed book, excellent routes for walking, pictures full of color for informing what excactly are you going to see. As all the travel giudes of DK editions, this one is best choice for visiting a place, too.
   The pictures, the historical events, the places descriptions, they all are also souvenoirs to reminds you, your pleasant travel to a place.



5. I hate the thought of writing a bad review for a DK Travel Guide - they are by far the best travel guides available. But I feel I have to warn everyone about this one. There's always at least one bad apple in the barrel, and I've found the 'bad apple'.
   
   First up, the good things. The background, history and descriptions of all the buildings are typical DK - first class, and better than every other guide out there. You can get the background story to the city and its art and architecture before you arrive.
   
   I took the 2008 edition away with me to Berlin in April 2008. You'd expect up-to-date information, wouldn't you? I agree that some things do change; opening times change, museum regulations change etc. BUT - so many things change in a single city, in such a short time since this updated version was written?
   
   I ended up missing so many things due to this book's wrong opening times to so many museums. Here are just a few things that happened -
   
   - It states that all museums are closed on Mondays, and I arrived on a Monday at 9:30am. So I took my time spending the day wandering around the city. At 4pm I had a look at the Pergamon Museum, and saw its open on Mondays. I found that there are many museums open on Mondays. I could have spent a large chunk of my first day in one of the museums.
   
   - I missed the Picture Gallery at Sanssouci because this guide stated the wrong closing time, even though I had paid for entrance to it.
   
   - I lost a lot of time, in the first 2 days there, getting lost on Berlin's train system because the plan at the back of the book is wrong in so many places. Lines aren't shown, wrong line numbers are shown, several lines now go further than shown in the guide. Use the maps on the ticket machines.
   
   - I wasted 2 hours traveling to a combined bookshop/art gallery that is a massive department store at the stated address. After this, I stopped relying on the practical information giving about anything.
   
   - I nearly missed the magnificent Gemaldegallerie (Picture Gallery) in former West Berlin because the guide stated that photography isn't allowed inside. (One of my criteria for visiting a museum is to take photos.) I went there to visit the gallery's bookshop, and discovered that photography IS allowed, just without flash - and I should hope so! Luckily I went to the gallery's shop first things in the morning.
   
   As another reviewer has already said, the 'Four Great Days In Berlin' suggested intinaries on page 10 and 11 would be impossible to do. The writer of this small section obviously has never done their own itinary. How can anyone take a 1 hour train journey to Wannsee, then walk for an hour in the forest to an art gallery, then walk further on to a lake, then take a boat trip on the lake to an island, then walk around the island, then get back to the train station to take the train to Potsdam, to 'enjoy the lovely Park Sanssouci ...' All this in the morning before lunch! (I spent an entire day at Park Sanssouci.) If anyone follows their itinaries, they wouldn't see anything at all - their trip to Berlin would be a huge blur in their mind.
   
   Clearly DK have just reprinted the first edition of this guide, dating from 2000, and are passing it off as a newly revised edition for 2008. There is no way that entire buildings can be changed and train lines extended in the space of a few months since this newly revised guide was 'revised'. (Not even the efficent Germans could manage that feat). I have no idea what errors are in the restaurant and hotel areas of this guide as I didn't use them.
   
   I have always used DK Guides whenever I travel, and will continue to do so. They are the market-leaders in travel guides. But my experiences with this one will make me very cautious in future. I'll be double checking the practical information given in all their guides in future.
   
   * Just treat this guide as a book written in 2000 - don't trust any opening times or other practical information.

5 comments about Greece Athens & the Mainland (Eyewitness Travel Guides).

1. This book has great photos. I always enjoy looking at DK Publishing's books - they are so pretty. However, if you are looking for a true travel guide, this is not the book.



2. It is a shame that DK publishing divides Greece into two separate books, one for the mainland and one for offshore islands. It forces you to buy and carry both books for complete coverage of the country. Even places that are quite close to each other geographically are in separate books, if one happens to be on the mainland, and the other on a nearby offshore island.Greek Islands (Eyewitness Travel Guides)



3. The tourbook is organized very well with history, maps, restaurants, hotels, etc and the colored pictures are excellent. The size makes an ideal companion when travelling.



4. These is no other that eyewitness guides...purchase and enjoy all aspects.



5. I usually use Lonely Planet and Green Guide (Guide Vert) but I read a lot of negative reviews about LP, so I gave Eyewitness a try. The photos and diagrams were fantastic - they really helped me make some choices about what to see compared to LP. And I particularly appreciated the diagrams of how many of the ancient sites such as Corinth, Delphi, and Olympia used to look, because you need some help when you see these ruins. Neither LP or Green Guide had these consistently.
   
   My main problem was that it didn't have a lot of useful information, or if it did it was hard to find. The book's organization isn't too good - for a given site or city it has information about the city in terms of tourism or practical all over the place. Green Guide has much better practical maps, which are in color and cover a larger geographic area. Eyewitness is great when you get to the site you want to see, but it is not so useful to find the sites.
   
   Also, compared to LP and Green Guide it has a lot less historical and explanatory information. And in terms of total number of places covered, I have the impression that Eyewitness has less than others. There's a price for nice, glossy photos.
   
   Finally, not that it's critical, but my binding broke within a day, though the book cover mostly kept the book together.
   
   I think I will only buy Eyewitness again in special circumstances.

5 comments about Western Europe (Multi Country Guide).

1. This book is a little TOO complete. Aside from its large physical presence, it had a little too much encyclopedia information and not enough about partying. I would suggest also scooping up a Party Europe Guidebook and picking and choosing the information needed from Lonely Planet. That's how I did it and it worked fairly well.



2. Complete, detailed information about most places the typical eurail traveller will go. I'm in the middle of a four week trip through Europe and have found it to be valuable. You don't need a book to help you find a party.



3. Absolutely a must if you are going to travel around in Europe. With detailed explanations from budget travelers to high-end vacations.



4. We have now completed three trips of Europe and Great Britain - all of which were fantastic, mainly because of the knowledge this book brings you. The ability to be able to be able to budget properly, know the good and bad parts of town and the true highlights of a location makes it worth every cent. Nothing really goes out of date either so even after a couple of years, it is still a very useful book to have and one that I would highly recommend taking with you (instead of those three shirts that you'll never wear!). Obviously you have to chose what suits your tastes and budgets but this book gives you the best arrangement of options available in any one location. We haven't been disappointed yet.



5. Just got back from visiting 8 countries in three weeks and this book came to my rescue many times. I'd recommend making photocopies or pulling out the pages for your trip so you do not have to lug the whole book around. This was a great way to get an idea of what to plan to see (the cities in two days boxes are really helpful to make a plan and the food recommendations are great (the prices are super helpful). I will definitely buy an updated version of this book if I ever do a similar trip!

5 comments about Rick Steves' Provence and the French Riviera 2008 (Rick Steves).

1. One must have this book if they are touring Provence. Makes it liveable and lovely



2. Great resource book. Tons of information that is well researched.



3. I felt that Rick's Provence and the French Riviera guide has some of the essentials but not the inspired coverage of his other books. There isn't the excitement that he presents in his Italian and other European guides. The coverage of the hill towns of Provence is somewhat perfunctory.



4. one of the best books I have read, lots of information and put in a great book form, have purchased his other books.



5. Rick Steves Provence and the French Riviera 2008-- I find it quite helpful and entertaining.

1 comments about Italian Hideaways: Discovering Enchanting Rooms and Private Villas.

1. The title of this book says it all. It IS enchanting. A very rare look at Italian style. Loved every page.

4 comments about The Patisseries of Paris: Chocolatiers, Tea Salons, Ice Cream Parlors, and more.

1. This is a lovely little fairy tale of a book, and whether you are a foodie, an armchair traveler, a world traveler, or someone who needs romance, this book will supply it in spades. When you see the book, you will notice that it is small, designed to look like a box from a patisserie or chocolatier, and the colors are muted and soft, like a 21rst century impressionist painting seen through a layer of clouds. I loved the writing. It is intimate, honest, amusing, and charming, almost like having your best friend talking to you, and filling your head with incredible pictures. You will almost be able to smell, taste, and hear the sounds of the places you are reading about. I will probably never go to Paris, but I fell in love with France in high school when I studied the language, so I love reading about all things French. If you are lucky enough to go to Paris, a quick perusal of this book will tell you the best places to eat, see, and experience. I do not recommend a quick perusal, however, because this book at it's best, is like a fairy tale in food. It is charming, concise, anecdotal, and romantic, because hey! It is Paris. When your head is filled to bursting with wonderful imagery from the writing, take a moment or ten or twenty to enjoy the beautiful photographs. The really lovely thing about this book is that the writing and the photos go together so well. One does not detract from the other, but it enhances and completes the other. I must say again how much I loved the writing. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes aspect of some of the shops, and especially "A Day In The Life of a Patissier". I can not recommend this book highly enough. It is absolutely wonderful, and I feel as though I have just had a blissful experience and not gained an ounce! The word evocative comes to mind; I can almost see myself sitting at one of those darling little tables, looking chic, tragically beautiful, and sharing sweets with a devastating French actor. That may not be your dream, but it is mine, and I won't say what happens after he pays the bill, and looks soulfully into my eyes, and warns me not to touch the last croissant.



2. A fun guide I finally got to see at the British bookstore, W.H.Smith on rue de Rivoli. The luscious pictures and detailed descriptions make you want to run all over Paris and not miss a single patisserie. Sadly a few places have since closed like Carette. Why any pastry shop should ever close in Paris is beyond me!



3. This cocoa-dusted treasure hits that mythical sweet spot between practical, trusted travel guide and gorgeous, dreamy (if petite) coffee table book. Full of the kind of beautiful photos and evocative lyrical prose that you'll never find in any guide and jam-packed with all of the actionable, expert advice that's missing from all those exquisitely photographed gift books, this one has it all. Organized by arrondissements, you're meant to flip to the neighborhood you're visiting to find the author's recos for the best macarons, tartes or baguettes nearby. If I were visiting France soon, that's just what I'd be doing. Cramming bookmarks between the pages, grabbing a map and taking off before the sun came up. But for now, curled up on my couch in New Jersey, I'm literally reading this like a romantic novel. Cover to cover. Dreaming of Paris...



4. My sister and I recently returned from 2 weeks in France. While in Paris we visited several of the recommended patisseries and totally enjoyed the wonderful offerings. We actually planned some of our sightseeing and shopping around the location of a few of these. Good idea for Paris!

5 comments about Croatia (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. When planning a trip, I go straight to the Eyewitness Travel Guides. They are well laid out by geographic area, informative, visually appealing and just the rigtht size to tuck into a travel bag. I hope to collect many more!



2. Love those DK guides. Got the book in plenty of time for my trip.
   Thanks



3. This guide is great for getting started in your trip planning. It also includes information on eastern and central Croatia in addition to the coast. Some guides ignore the east. The pictures in the guide are wonderful and give you glimpses of what to expect. There are many helpful general travel insights that you need like information on changing money, use of credit cards, tipping, local customs, etc. We don't plan to stay and eat in the major tourist cities so the food and lodging info isn't that helpful to us. But overall, this guide was worth the money for when I can't be on the web getting info. The book has a British slant since it's from a British publisher but if you don't need all the references to be in dollars that won't be a problem.



4. We are great fans of the Eyewitness travel guides, and if the release date is within the past year, we would go with Eyewitness. This volume is up to Eyewitness's usual high standards. As usual, the great illustrations give the book a tremendous advantage over its competitors. Over the centuries, Slavs, Croats, Dalmatians, Slavonians, Serbs, Jews, Italians and others have left their imprint on the country. The illustrations help us keep our bearings.
   
   Other advantages: all three major regions are covered, the food, hotel and entertainment sections are up to date, and the cultural and wildlife sections are particularly well done.
   
   One surprising omission: Eyewitness usually provides an excellent list of books for further reading. That section is missing in this volume, and we bought a "Rough Guide" with its list of books and literature to fill the gap.
   
   Neither guidebook is particularly strong on the history of Croatia, the result of the extremely complex nature of its history. Luckily, Croatia Through History by Branka Magas has just been released and provides an excellent detailed account.
   
   It's best to do your homework before you leave home, of course; who wants to spend time reading history on the ground? As usual, Eyewitness's "Croatia" is the perfect guidebook for our taste.
   
   Robert C. Ross 2008



5. I am a big fan of the Eyewitness series from DK and own about a dozen of them. I have usually used Eyewitness on many of my trips and used other guides for supplemental information, if at all. I usually walk around with just my camera and the Eyewitness guide.
   
   However, I have just returned from 3+ weeks traveling with another couple through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia and found this guide to be pretty useless. It soon went into my suitcase and stayed there for the rest of the trip. I write this review in the hope that DK will redo this guide, as they are my favorite guidebook series.
   
   My first criticism is that this book is confined solely to Croatia. I didn't expect is to cover neighboring countries in depth, but expected it to at least cover trips to the "highlights" of the neighboring countries: Kotor, and perhaps Budva in Montenegro; Mostar in Bosnia. These are both days trips from Dobrovnik and are included in many packaged tours. Anyone who goes to Dubrovnik and fails to also visit Kotor and Mostar is making a mistake.
   
   Of somewhat lesser importance, I would have liked to see Lake Bled and Ljubljana in neighboring Slovenia also included. While I did not go on a tour, I did check to see where tours go and these are popular destinations on trips to the region and should, in my opinion, be included. Were they, the book would be much more useful to both tour participants and those traveling the region on their own. Including all of the places I have mentioned would add, I would think, at most 50 additional pages to the book.
   
   The second area where this guidebook falls greviously short is restaurant and hotel recommendations. If using this book while on a tour, these are probably not important. DK has a habit of listing all restaurants in one section and all hotels in another for the entire country. I find this very awkward to use, as when in Dubrovnik, I want to find everything in the section for that city, not have to flip between different sections, and then search for Dubrovnik restaurants among listings for all areas and cities.
   
   But fundamentally this guidebook does not adequately cover the rich choice of hotels and restauants available throughout Croatia and it's neighbors. Only a few restaurants and hotels are mentioned for most towns. If you eliminate the budget choice and the luxury choice, you are left with only one or two choices, which is just inadequate.
   
   We used Fodor and Frommer's guidebooks to select hotels prior to the trip and to pick restaurants while we were there. The number of choices in each of these was double or triple the choices offered by Eyewitness. Two to three pages listing restaurants for Dubrovnik does not seem excessive; Eight listings for all of Dubrovnik is unquestionably inadequate.
   
   Croatia and the surrounding Balkan areas are a wonderful place to visit. I would hope that DK would re-evaluate their approach to "Country" (as opposed to City)guides and this one in particular. As for the available choices, Rick Steves is not bad; Frommer's covers restaurants and hotels well, but is also confined to just Croatia. Fodor's may be the best overall guide at the moment.

4 comments about Switzerland (Country Guide).

1. Lonely Planet's guide to Switzerland was extremely helpful while travelling to the country. Great detail and updated information on items such as hours of operations and costs were extremely helpful. Additionally, information on excursions such as to Vaduz, Liechtenstein was very up-to-date and an easy read.



2. I recently found myself contemplating a trip to Basel and, never having been there before and, knowing I would be alone without even a gendarme to ask questions of, nor another human being, I thought I should find a Basel guidebook. Amazingly enough it seems there is no such thing available on Amazon so I went with this larger book, which deals with all of Switzerland--in fact, nearly all of Western culture in one fell swoop.
   
   The authors of LONELY PLANET SWITZERLAND have convinced me for the present at any rate that Switzerland (Helvetia) is the most important country on planet earth, not that they suggest we rank countries by importance or anything. It is a handy guide in the sense that physically, the book is constructed so that you could rip out, as I did, the section on Basel and Aargau, and throw the rest of the book away, and the pages you need form a complete little fascicle, due to an amazing new wonder glue that holds different little chapbooksized sections together until you don't need them together any more. Thus armed with my guide, I went to Basel. The authors share not only hotels, restaurants, and train stations, they go all out to make you feel like you can do it too. I learned how to use the phone, where to shop for lampshades, how to buy a single stamp, where the best (and worst) Swiss-Indian cafes are, and what famous medieval scholar is buried in the tombs inside Munster cathedral. Why Erasmus of course!
   
   They have cute sidebars like Basel's most famous guy, Albert Hoffman, still alive at age 102 or something like that--the man who invented LSD.
   
   Later, I met a pair of Basellienne poets, one American born, one educated in the USA, who showed me their Basel, a charming tour of tombs, elevators, shops and bridges, culminating in a magical ferry boat ride across the Rhine from Big Basel to small. The afternoon was clear, like a glass of vodka, and I felt positively drunk with knowledge as I looked across the water and seemed to see my own back, walking away, mever to return.



3. This book was the first item to land in my backpack whenever I left my apartment during the year I spent living in Bern, Switzerland. Like most Lonely Planet guides, this one is well-written, entertaining, and generally accurate and up-to-date.
   Things I found helpful:
   - The suggested walking tours of cities are great for a quick orientation of the place.
   - Brief context and history about locations gives you about the same information as your average tourist brochure, but more concise and convenient.
   - Hiking routes are briefly mentioned with sufficient detail, but for any extended hiking, I would highly recommend Lonely Planet Walking in Switzerland.
   - Information on the best value in train passes and train routes makes eco-friendly travel easy.
   - The section on Liechtenstein is a nice addition since many treat it as a day trip from Switzerland.
   Considering that Lonely Planet typically caters to budget travelers, I was surprised to see how many upscale hotels it includes for some locations. Overall, the book provides something for everyone and is useful for both short trips and extended exploration of the country.
   Mary Ann Miller, author of CH is for Chocolate: Individually Wrapped Tastes of Switzerland



4. This book and the map was all we needed for our trip to Switzerland. The book has all sources of information - places to see, restaurants, transportation tips, etc. In Geneva and Bern, we followed the walking tours suggested in the book, and we were able to see all major attractions in 2 hrs. For some interesting places to see, the book just provides a brief description, but also gives a website link (when available) for more information, which is very helpful. I would definitely buy another book from Lonely Planet for my future trips.