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Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more!The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes.
The really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list.
Specifics:
The guides are organized as follows:
How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
............Introducing Budapest
........................Budapest on the Map
........................History of Budapest
........................Budapest at a Glance
........................Through the Year (events, holidays)
........................A River View of Budapest
............Budapest Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings
........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.
........................Further Afield (trips just outside Budapest)
........................Two Guided Walks (highly recommended)
Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, bars, cafes
............Shops / Markets
............Entertainment
Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Getting to Budapest
............Getting Around Budapest
........................Planes, trains and automobiles, signs
............Street Maps
............General Index
............Phrase Book (forget it.... Hungarian is very, very difficult to learn and pronounce!)
(My grandparents were from Hungary)
Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Budapest", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Budapest through the Year - including events, etc.
For the specific areas it provides an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or sections, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.
Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly. And, Budapest has a great architectural history.
The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions
The books are so well thought-out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages.
Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.
