Travel Book Reviews

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Eyewitness travel guides are my favorite for photographs and basic information. They are also helpful for some historical overview. Small maps are interspersed throughout the book, but if your family is traveling by car you will need a legitimate road map. Along with attractions, Eyewitness includes places to stay and eat.

Rick Steves London

Rick Steves’ books in general have very entertaining travel reviews. The pictures are black and white and the little walking maps are rustic but useable. The same basic information e.g.; hours open, cost, location are included as in the other travel books. The one difference (for the budget traveler) is that the book will include cost saving tips and anecdotes like potty locations. Rick Steves London includes various city walk plans. He also has four pages of recommendations for people traveling with children.

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London for Dummies - Frommers

This book is very readable and entertaining. It includes decent maps recommendations for accommodations, restaurants and attractions, and tips that save time and frustration. There are kid friendly icons indicating child friendly hotels, restaurants and attractions. The budget conscious traveler will also find many tips for saving money.

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Best Day Trips from London,
a Frommers' Guide

This book is very well organized and was extremely helpful! There are 25 trips described of varying lengths. Each is clearly outlined with a brief overview and map, and the main highlights. Transportation choices for each trip are so complete, you’ll see price and contact information for all possibilities to your destination, whether by train, car, bus, ferry, underground or light rail. A thorough one day itinerary follows, with best options for getting around and overviews of sites with contact information in bold. For each trip, there is an Outdoor Activities section, a blurb on shopping advice, a few restaurants mentioned, a list of available tours and a summary of evening events in case your day trip is extended. The front of the book offers categorized day trip highlights (best restaurants, best literary sites…). And the back offers History, Art and Architecture basics.  This book is easy to skim, with bold red lines and bars delineating sections so I could quickly pick the day trips that looked interesting. I used it for our day trips to Windsor, Greenwich and Oxford, and when we traveled to York.

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Rick Steve's Great Britain

Rick specializes in cost-minded advice for travel to Europe. This is a dense reference book – the pages are covered with small black print. It covers even small details such as driving tips, rail schedules, money, culture, customs and communicating. There are multiple maps. It is organized by area, and offers sample itineraries for various lengths of stay. Favored attractions (which didn’t always match ours) are ranked with bold triangles indicating ‘must-sees’. His descriptions are very thorough and he lists only his recommended restaurants and hotels, realistically outlining the pros and cons. However, the things to do and places to go choices are very grown-up oriented, with emphasis on walking tours and art and history. You really have to read his under-ranked items (or another book) to find places the kids would be excited about or restaurants where you’d be comfortable bringing young kids. In fact, there is rarely any mention of kids of any age anywhere in the book, except for ticket prices. I used this book for getting-around info, and reliable accommodation recommendations (though many hotels he includes only sleep 2!) The section on London was very expansive and handily arranged by neighborhood – I did carry the book with me on some days in London.

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London for Families,
by Larry Lain and Michael Lain

This book is very easy to read, with large print and spacious sub-headings. There are entertaining (funny!) drawings, pertinent sidebar travel tips, and main points are summarized at the end of each chapter. The Where to Stay section has thorough advice for exactly how to phone accommodation  managers and what to ask to get the best price. Neighborhoods are described to make reservation decisions, but the book does not list hotels. It does list realistic touring tips such as: packing suggestions, money options, how to handle jet lag, how to save money, how to keep the kids happy on long flights or in long lines, day planning that includes breaks, and even daily journal writing starter ideas for the whole family. It doesn’t rank attractions, but lists those that suit kids. However, it doesn’t differentiate what might appeal to a 12 year old as opposed to a 2 year old. Admission prices aren’t stated for all attractions, but family pass options are noted. After the basics of daily life chapters, which include great tips for managing kids’ physical needs and safety, there are chapters organized by type of attraction – pageantry and history, churches and structures, museums, theater and art, parks and diversions, shopping, and day trips. The final chapters help families decide which attractions to see and develop a budget for the trip, including sample itineraries.

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Take the Kids ENGLAND,
by Joseph Fullman

This book is straight forward, well organized, and subject headings are categorized using easy to read shades of gray or black to divide entries. I did not use it frequently, as it covers far too many details than I could ever need. The first pages are 17 glossy road maps of England, with two devoted to London, followed by 11 more glossy snap shot pages of the ten named geographical areas of England. The next 500 pages go into great detail about everything you can do with kids in those ten areas. Each area chapter includes a section on Top Towns, where main cities are highlighted and best attractions given a star, Special Trips, which might be castles, stately homes or villages, Kids Out, which are zoos, farms, parks, trains and gardens, Sports and Activities, which are gyms, bicycle rentals, bowling centers, stadiums, toddler play zones, Kids In, which are cinemas, museums, science centers and theaters, and finally Eating Out, which lists kid-friendly restaurants by city. The last 32 pages lists a few hotel chains, followed by Recommended Hotels by city, including nearby London tube station, prices and contact information, and a brief description. The final chapter lists camp, resort, home exchange, boating, and self-catering options. I used this book for overview information.

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Fodor's: See It Paris

This book is a comprehensive guide to Paris including: history of Paris, transportation, sight seeing, excursions, shopping, restaurants, hotels... There are numerous easy to read maps, and color photographs for virtual touring. My favorite page is the last one which is the Subway System map. The sturdy page could easily be cut off and stuck in a pocket for quick reference. For families, there are some rating systems for certain sights that reflect the level of interest for children and also short "Children's Paris Section". It does have an insider's feel to the information provided that other large travel book companies don't have.
[2nd Edition]

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Sandra Gustafson's
Great Sleeps Paris

This is largely an exhaustive list of Parisian Hotels with detailed descriptions, ratings, closest RER stops, and contact information. It was not clear, however, that any hotel listed could accommodate a family of five in one room, but there were indications where some rooms could be joined. The list includes budget hotels, hostels, and some four star establishments. There is also a list of apartment rental companies, which may be the most realistic way for a family of five to stay all together in Paris. Ms. Gustafson includes traveling tips, transportation information, a great shopping guide, and a small section on French phrases and vocabulary. There are black and white maps, otherwise there are no pictures included. (11th edition, copyright 2007)

Rick Steves Germany & Austria

Very well known for encouraging travel even on a budget, Rick Steves' travel books rank the sights to see in each city, and provide tips on how to get the most from each attraction, such as which rooms in Munich's Residenz you mustn't miss, and when to visit Berlin's Reichstag to avoid long lines.

There are clear plans for proceding on your own walking tour, and highlights of popular spots. But the book also points out cities and sights that are not overrun with tourists. There are handy color maps in the front cover, and black & white maps inside for finding listed items. Hotels are recommended for their customer service, cleanliness, and usually are budget friendly, though expensive places are included, too.

Though a vital resource, the book is not particularly family oriented. Family prices for attractions aren't mentioned and kids prices are only sporadically mentioned. Walking tours, sitting in pubs, and lots of art museums are emphasized, all of which would never work well with youngsters. Legoland isn't mentioned in the version I have. However, if a recommended eatery is family friendly, that is noted.

We carried this on our trip mainly because of the practical travel advice, like how to use the phone, and whether to tip, and the 'eating' sections, which are arranged by area of the city.

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There are a few color photos at the start of the book with a couple maps. It is a thick paperback, with newsprint-ish pages full of detailed descriptions of everything you could possibly need to know. The first part lists the "best of"s, with entries under headings such as best museums, best spas, best driving tours, best walks, best beer halls, ect. Another section gives an overview, with calendar of events, how to arrive and get around. The rest of the book goes in depth to large cities and areas of Germany, each preceded by a map. Being unfamiliar with Germany, I read the whole book to plan where to go on our 9 days in the country. The sections are divided by red borders and uses fonts of varying sizes. Restaurants and hotels are included for every area and range from very expensive to inexpensive.

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Germany for Dummies

This book, besides its cover flaps of a Germany map and the Berlin transportation routes, is all black and white, yet varying fonts make headings easy to spot, along with other help symbols like 'best of the best', 'bargain alert', 'kid friendly', and special text boxes. The wording style is casual, easy-to-read and humor is spread around, for instance, the family section is titled "traveling with the brood", and second-ranked hotels are called "runner-up hotels". Another section is called "more cool things to see and do".The restaurants are easy to sort, as their type (Asian, Italian, etc.) is in large font, as well as the price category. Transportation routes and how-to's, such as for the U-bahn and S-bahn in Berlin are thorough and easy to understand. The book is very helpful in pointing the way to other internet sources, with some hotel and tourist planning websites included.

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Day Trips Germany

This book reads with such intelligence and authority and covers 60 places. Detailed maps of each spot, with numbers indicating highlighted attractions make planning easy. The exact procedures (for example, exactly how and when to date stamp your subway ticket in Munich) are described for getting to a city and getting around in it. Then, a self-guided tour is described for each city, with well-explained side trips and ways to shorten the tour if needed. The book uses no color, but the black & white photographs are crisp, expressive, and frequent. The attractions are listed in order that you'll see them along the prescribed tour, with all the details a tourist needs, including a price range in euros. The inclusion of many references to internet sites makes further research a breeze. Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin are suggested base cities for exploring other parts of Germany via car or rail systems.

Not many notes are given regarding kid considerations, and younger kids are unlikely to enjoy a walking tour, but the descriptions of attractions, and how best to get around various points of interest in 60 different cities would benefit any parent.

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Fodor's Denmark

As promised on the front cover, this book really does include where to stay and eat for all budgets. The book is very complete and best bets in hotels, eateries, and attractions are noted. It tries to cover all of Denmark, with over 60 pages for Copenhagen. The front contains an overview of the areas covered, as well as travelers tips about timing, weather, special interests, embassies, etc. The descriptions of attractions are brief. The last part has a lengthy account about pastry, as well as books & movies with Danish settings, and a historical chronology of the country. Multiple pages of Danish words and phrases are included. Some internet sites for further research are listed. Red highlights with black font make the book easy to read and to find sections. Maps are mainly to indicate the roads between cities, but there are a few maps of Copenhagen to illustrate its hotels, roads, and attractions. The map of Copenhagen's eateries would be great to have on hand when touring the city.

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