No comments about Spain: Travellers' Nature Guide (Nature Guides).

No comments about Wild Spain: A Traveller's Guide (Wild Guides).

No comments about Walking in the Cordillera Cantabrica (Cicerone Mountain Walking).

No comments about The Rough Guides' Algarve Directions 2 (Rough Guide Directions).

No comments about Mirror, Mirror.

2 comments about Knopf CityMap Guide: Madrid (Knopf Citymap Guides).

1. This guide made a 4-day visit to Madrid one of the most enjoyable sightseeing trips I've ever done. It is especially useful for people who like to do sightseeing on their own. Many of Madrid's sights, museums, and treasures are packed into an area that is walking distance from the City center and this innovative travel book made getting from one place to another on foot a breeze.

   It divides the city into sections with a single fold-out page for each section. Each page has an easy-to-use map that can be read without a magnifying glass; brief highlights of the museums with hours and admission information; points of interest; architecture features; history notes as well as a few well-chosen bar, restaurant, and entertainment recommendations. The pages are printed on a heavy card stock so they stand up when you fold them out and the size is perfect for navigating your way as you walk. When closed, it's only a little bigger than a passport and fits in a pocket or small purse.

   We easily walked from our hotel to the Prado, the royal palace, plaza mayor, crystal palace, Atocha train station, and dozens of other sights and museums in just 4 days. The restaurant recommendations were consistently outstanding. In each case, the restaurants were small, beautifully decorated, offered deliciously unique foods at reasonable prices. We would never have found these great restaurants if it were not for the book. They were close to major points of interest, but off the main roads, hidden in alleys and neighborhoods with little signage.

   I've used maps for sightseeing in other cities - Rome, Paris, London, Amsterdam-- but this is the first time I was never lost, never had to ask directions, and enjoyed so many delightful dining experiences. I will definitely look for Knopf's city guide the next time I plan an urban sightseeing trip.




2. I have used many different guidebooks around Europe: Let's Go, Rick Steves, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Eyewitness Guides, and Frommer's and this Knopf CityMap Guide to Madrid was excellent for my trip. I went to Madrid for 8 days for a conference. So I had to be at the conference for 5 days all day except for dinner. This book made it very easy to hit the essentials and find places to eat within the short time I had to explore. The maps are THE BEST MAPS OF ANY GUIDEBOOK! Separated by area of Madrid, they are easy to read, are on stiff pages that don't blow around and get mangled like most do, and are easy to find quickly while walking down the street. The only thing I'd say bad about the maps is that they don't show all of the side streets, but if they did they'd get too busy. It has metro maps too. I found vegetarian food with this guidebook.

4 comments about Barcelonawalks (Henry Holt Walks Series).

1. George Semler has told as much about the passions of the people of Barcelona as about its buildings. From the medieval splendor of the Gothic Quarter through the 19th neighborhood of Gracia to the wildly idiosyncratic buildings of the Catalan Renaissance, each block is revealed not only as a sequence of architectural structures but as the place where the great and the ordinary people of Barcelona fought, dreamed and struggled. I walked every one of its routes with pleasure and a great sense of history. Marvellous!



2. As much as I have enjoyed the other books on Barcelona that I have read, nothing has brought this spectacular city to life in quite the same way as Barcelonawalks. I went on the walks with a native who knows the city so well she can get navigate the labyrinth of the Barri Gotic with her eyes closed. The book was a revelation even to her. George Semler, the author, brings considerable reserves of insight, style and wit to the proceedings. As a book, it's a wonderful confection. As a guidebook (a recipe I don't ordinarily care for since they often do to their subject what the Kraft company does to cheese), it is more like private tour with someone who knows the broad arch of the city's rich history, the character of it's people, as well as a baroque quantity of entertaining minutia. Semler's restaurant recommendations alone might be worth the price of admission, as you are likely to find yourself the only tourist in various characteristic and popular neighborhood eateries.



3. Barcelonawalks is the best guide book I have ever come across. It allows you to explore the old city without the pressures of a tourist guide, introducing you to history that you would never uncover on your own.



4. We just returned from Barcelona and used this wonderful guide to explore the city. The book begins with about 20 pages of general introduction to Barcelona and then gives 5 walks, separated by area: El Barri Gottic, Sant Pere and La Ribera, El Raval, Gracia and L'Eixample. Each walk takes about 3 to 4 hours (longer if you stop at recommended restaurants and attractions), and are as good as having a private walking tour. There are lots of interesting little stories about the city, the buildings and the people. We've used many of the books in this series and found BarcelonaWalks not quite as intimate and charming as others, but still very good. Also the book is getting older now so it is less reliable when it comes to restaurants and other venues, but we still enjoyed these walks very much. Each section contains a map (which does not name all the streets, which can be problematic) and a few balck-and-white photographs.

No comments about 101 Spanish Verbs with Video (101... Language).

No comments about Teach Yourself Spanish Language, Life, and Culture (Teach Yourself).

1 comments about Don Fernando, Or, Variations on Some Spanish Themes (Armchair Traveller Series).

1. This book, which I have burst upon quite unexpectedly, offered me a wealth of peaceful meditation and subtle joy. Maugham elaborates on his "spanish themes" with a casualness that easily wins the beholder. It can be called in some ways a travel book, recalling the chapters in which he more than alludes to the Spanish way of living, i.e. their eating habits, the look and feel of their cities and so on. Yet, Maugham also shares with his reader the fruits of his long research he conducted on Spaniards of the Golden Age. What I find the most pleasurable in these memoirs is the way Maugham reveals the fact behind the fiction regarding many issues, to name a few; Spanish literature and drama of the Golden Ages, the life and days (and the religious ferver, which he finds nonexistent of) El Greco. At any rate, this book is excellent reading, and reveals between the lines, the sometimes ironic, but never cynical humor of the artist.