Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51514 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Turtleback
• 296 pages

Customer Reviews

Eyewitness needs to rethink this guide
I am a big fan of the Eyewitness series from DK and own about a dozen of them. I have usually used Eyewitness on many of my trips and used other guides for supplemental information, if at all. I usually walk around with just my camera and the Eyewitness guide.

However, I have just returned from 3+ weeks traveling with another couple through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia and found this guide to be pretty useless. It soon went into my suitcase and stayed there for the rest of the trip. I write this review in the hope that DK will redo this guide, as they are my favorite guidebook series.

My first criticism is that this book is confined solely to Croatia. I didn't expect is to cover neighboring countries in depth, but expected it to at least cover trips to the "highlights" of the neighboring countries: Kotor, and perhaps Budva in Montenegro; Mostar in Bosnia. These are both days trips from Dobrovnik and are included in many packaged tours. Anyone who goes to Dubrovnik and fails to also visit Kotor and Mostar is making a mistake.

Of somewhat lesser importance, I would have liked to see Lake Bled and Ljubljana in neighboring Slovenia also included. While I did not go on a tour, I did check to see where tours go and these are popular destinations on trips to the region and should, in my opinion, be included. Were they, the book would be much more useful to both tour participants and those traveling the region on their own. Including all of the places I have mentioned would add, I would think, at most 50 additional pages to the book.

The second area where this guidebook falls greviously short is restaurant and hotel recommendations. If using this book while on a tour, these are probably not important. DK has a habit of listing all restaurants in one section and all hotels in another for the entire country. I find this very awkward to use, as when in Dubrovnik, I want to find everything in the section for that city, not have to flip between different sections, and then search for Dubrovnik restaurants among listings for all areas and cities.

But fundamentally this guidebook does not adequately cover the rich choice of hotels and restauants available throughout Croatia and it's neighbors. Only a few restaurants and hotels are mentioned for most towns. If you eliminate the budget choice and the luxury choice, you are left with only one or two choices, which is just inadequate.

We used Fodor and Frommer's guidebooks to select hotels prior to the trip and to pick restaurants while we were there. The number of choices in each of these was double or triple the choices offered by Eyewitness. Two to three pages listing restaurants for Dubrovnik does not seem excessive; Eight listings for all of Dubrovnik is unquestionably inadequate.

Croatia and the surrounding Balkan areas are a wonderful place to visit. I would hope that DK would re-evaluate their approach to "Country" (as opposed to City)guides and this one in particular. As for the available choices, Rick Steves is not bad; Frommer's covers restaurants and hotels well, but is also confined to just Croatia. Fodor's may be the best overall guide at the moment.

Topflight as usual with one omission
We are great fans of the Eyewitness travel guides, and if the release date is within the past year, we would go with Eyewitness. This volume is up to Eyewitness's usual high standards. As usual, the great illustrations give the book a tremendous advantage over its competitors. Over the centuries, Slavs, Croats, Dalmatians, Slavonians, Serbs, Jews, Italians and others have left their imprint on the country. The illustrations help us keep our bearings.

Other advantages: all three major regions are covered, the food, hotel and entertainment sections are up to date, and the cultural and wildlife sections are particularly well done.

One surprising omission: Eyewitness usually provides an excellent list of books for further reading. That section is missing in this volume, and we bought a The Rough Guide to Croatia 4 with its list of books and literature to fill the gap.

Neither guidebook is particularly strong on the history of Croatia, the result perhaps of the extremely complex nature of Croatia's history. Luckily, Croatia Through History by Branka Magas has just been released and provides an excellent detailed account of that history.

It's best to do your homework before you leave home, of course; who wants to spend time reading history on the ground? As usual, Eyewitness's "Croatia" is the perfect guidebook for our taste.

Robert C. Ross 2008

A helpful introduction to Croatia
This guide is great for getting started in your trip planning. It also includes information on eastern and central Croatia in addition to the coast. Some guides ignore the east. The pictures in the guide are wonderful and give you glimpses of what to expect. There are many helpful general travel insights that you need like information on changing money, use of credit cards, tipping, local customs, etc. We don't plan to stay and eat in the major tourist cities so the food and lodging info isn't that helpful to us. But overall, this guide was worth the money for when I can't be on the web getting info. The book has a British slant since it's from a British publisher but if you don't need all the references to be in dollars that won't be a problem.