Insight Guides

The beautiful colour photos glossy sheets make this guide seem attractive at first. But I was taken aback by some of its racist comments. Take, for example, these quotes on page 292: 'many thousands flooding into the hills and burrows to escape the terrifyingly relentless sword of Islam' and 'Astonishingly, Islam proved rather more open to religious freedom than Christianity'.

This book is also probably better used to plan a trip to Turkey than as a guide. While there is a lot of historical show more and cultural background at the start of the book, individual places are not always covered in much detail and some (e.g. the valleys of Cappadoccia) none at all. Pretty heavy to lug around with you too. show less

This book presents a series of walking tours that you can take while in Melbourne. It offers color photographs and brief descriptions of the places listed on each tour.

Some It's a little hard to search for descriptions of specific sites, though since it's set up by walking tour, rather than being alphabetical by region. Also it focuses rather heavily on architecture and shopping as focal point, which is fine, but I'm not a big fan of shopping and ended up only skimming those sections. I show more would have preferred more of the local museums and such.

I used it as a general guide to come up with my own itinerary while I was in Melbourne and it worked well for me, helping me to focus in on one small suburb at a time (which is important since Melbourne is HUGE). I used the maps to help me get around, so it definitely helped me during my trip. I also appreciated that it was a slim book and fairly lightweight. Not a bad way to go, if you only going to be visiting the one city. show less

Best for:
People who like more narrative and fewer details in their guidebooks.

In a nutshell:
Broken down by neighborhood, this guide provides narratives but not loads of details on places to see.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
We are traveling to Glasgow later this month and sadly I could find no full-size proper travel books on the city - only pocket guides.

Review:
This is the first of two pocket-sized guides of Glasgow I’ll be reviewing. I started with this one because until I read the show more second, I thought this one was fine, so I guess the big take-away for me is to get at least a couple of different guides when traveling so we can compare and take the best away from them.

Like most travel books, this one is broken down by area, but it doesn’t give a great sense of where things are in relation to the city center. It’s also a long narrative with some items bolded, which isn’t how I can best process and grasp information. I did circle and start different attractions, but mentally I’m just not entirely sure where they all are and how they relate to each other.

However, I will be keeping this book, as I’m sure there’s good information in here, including a fairly robust ‘travel tips’ section that will likely come in handy.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep until our trip is over, then donate it. show less

There's a lot of history in this book, which seems odd for a travel guide. It's a fine guide, although the need for this sort of thing has diminished with the rise of information on the internet.