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Title: The Rough Guide to Wales 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)
ISBN: 1843536072
Author:
Rough Guides
Publicate Date: 2006-06-19
Publish: 2006-06-19
List Price: $19.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $9.39
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.39
Amazon Merchant Price: $13.59
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Great guidebook for someone going abroad!
I ordered this book a few weeks ago and was absolutely thrilled to finally receive it! I was so discouraged that most book stores don't carry Welsh travel guides. This guide did not disappoint at all! The two authors are very thorough and divide the guide into the following sections:
- Colour (as the Brits say) gives the reader a feel for Wales. They describe various events throughout the year (like the Dylan Thomas festival, great places outdoors for hiking, cragging) and where to go, how to get there.
- Guide describes the various cities in North Wales and South Wales in depth. Each section has a map and lists most restaurants, prices, and local cuisine and venues to try out.
- context describes the history, culture, music, literature, films, books, and enough Welsh to get the reader by.
I'll be going to Swansea, which is by Cardiff, and I imagine I'll be exploring that town greatly! I am interested in finding many different castles in the surrounding areas too and the guide points out where they are and the best means to get there.
I think perhaps the only thing I would have liked more is more color photographs. But other than that, it's a very functional and easy guide book to use.
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2: Off the Beaten Track to Wales...
The 2006 "Rough Guide to Wales" features a part of Great Britain generally off the beaten track for most tourists coming from the United States. Although a small component part of the United Kingdom, Wales has fiercely maintained its independent character over the centuries. Travelers will find a geographically varied region celebrating its Celtic origins while welcoming tourists.
The Rough Guide to Wales combines vital visitor information, maps, graphics, and photographs in a compact format, along with the expected Rough Guide opinions on where to go and what to see. Wales offers some dramatic shoreline and equally dramatic hill country in Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons. Wales also features an excellent selection of castles, many in good repair and most open to the public. If some popular areas, especially along the seacoast, have become overrun with caravan (trailer) parks, other parts are relatively uncluttered and offer spectacular attractions. Wales has been a tourist destination for the British for many years and the infrastructure for accomodations, eating, and traveling are both well-developed and offer options across a broad price range.
The Rough Guide breaks down Wales into seven geographic regions in order to address to address the principal attractions, accomodation, and information on how to get around. Website addresses are generously included for those needing additional information about hours, rates, and times of specific facilities. The last portion of the guide features some interesting narrative essays on the history of Wales, its modern sense of nationalism, its natural history, and its music and other cultural attractions.
This guide is highly recommended to visitors to Wales. Coupled with the appropriate Ordnance Survey maps, the guide should be a very sufficient planning resource for most vacations.
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3: A good start
After travelling in Europe with the Lonely Planet guides for Paris and Barcelona, I found this guide somewhat more difficult to navigate. However, I suppose you must consider that the city guides will generally be more detailed than those for an entire country.
Although the guide gives a wealth of attractions, restaurants, and sleeping options for the various regions, I found it a bit lacking in maps and "how to get there" information. In addition, I would have liked it if the author had included a more website references. Finally, for some of the hotel and restaurant options, it would have been nice if there was some system used to denote how cheap or expensive a place was.
If you plan on using this book as your primary reference for your visit to Wales, I highly recommend purchasing a good map and plan on doing a lot of driving.
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4: Good for detailed site information, but poor job updating
Like other Rough Guides, this book excels in its depth and breadth of coverage - if a town isn't covered, it does not have very much for the tourist. However, I was very disappointed by the out-of-date price information found in this ostensibly brand-new guide. While I don't expect guidebooks to be perfect, it became obvious that they had not contacted many of the bed and breakfasts they list for many years, as rates I was quoted were often almost twice as much as the Rough Guide price! In a couple of cases, the proprietor was no longer doing B&B, and had not been doing so for several years! So buy the Rough Guide for its detailed site information, but look elsewhere if you need accomodation advice.
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5: Rough Guide to Wales
Great book for sightseeing and understanding history. Would be a perfect book if a bit more info on dining and shopping was added.
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