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2 comments about Wales Insight Guide (Insight Guides).

1. I am a fan of the Insight Guide series, and this volume is particularly excellent. Not only is the photography colorful and breathtaking, but the narrative and information presented is relevant, topical, and well detailed. I particularly appreciate the fact that less commercial areas are presented well, and with more care than many other guides. The book contains a variety of useful features, from details of interesting spots, to climate, cultural, travel, and lodging information useful to any traveler. I particularly appreciated the coverage of the beautiful and often overlooked Snowdonia region.
   
   There are other guidebooks available with somewhat more detailed lodging information, and I would likely buy them as well, but for planning a trip to Wales, this book provides an excellent overview, and facilitates decision making in part by the abundance of color photographs of genuinely captivating subjects. Maps are not particularly detailed, but are carefully scaled and positioned for ease of use.
   
   For planning a trip to Wales, this book is virtually indispensable.



2. I have an older edition than the one graced with the lovely lass on the cover, unfortunately. But the Insight Guide packs a lot of cultural information, historical background, and analytical mini-essays into its admittedly heftier bulk than other guides. It gives, say, far less architectural detail or in-depth context than a Blue Guide, but fills out the often skimpier coverage of a more popular guide listing hotels, restaurants, and attractions along the descriptive essays--written by various authors--on each region. Appendices list the typical details of where to eat, sleep, spend, stretch, and slouch; the separation of this data may make for either a more--or less--user-friendly guide.
   
   The nuances, since many writers contribute, on such topics as the incomers buying and restoring homes in Welsh-speaking areas, the rise and fall of the mining valleys, the parlous state of the native language and the effects of deevolution, Snowdonia's beauty and its fragile state when so many climb its peaks, the revitalization of Cardiff, and the reason there's so many castles--these all gain thoughtful if brief treatment.
   
   A good appetizer to whet the appetite before you go. You will not obtain itineraries in-depth of where-to-turn, how late it's open, how much it costs. But as a background planner, resource, and pictorial (not to be understated when thinking about where you want to visit, although it looks suspiciously sunny all the time) panorama, this is a carefully prepared yet not overwhelmingly meticulous resource.

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