Loaded with Photos, APA Insight Guides Perfect for Armchair Travelers
Jan 18 '00
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then APA Insight Guides are some of the fattest, richest guidebooks on the market! Lavish color photos appear on almost every page -- not just telling you what you can expect to see when you travel, but showing you! The books are fat in terms of page count too -- my volume on Germany spans more than 400 pages. Other volumes in the series hover around 300 pages, but none seem much thinner than that. Lots of bang for the buck!
APA Insight Guides are published by Houghton Mifflin (New York) and are available for dozens of countries and cities throughout the world. Most cost about $22 -- a price that is well justified, given the quality printing and extensive color photography and illustration.
Culture and sights are the big emphasis for this guidebook series, with restaurant and hotel listings getting short shrift (fine by me). My book on Germany starts off with about 70 pages describing the history and culture of the country, with a section on changes that have occurred over the last decade since the reunification of west and east, a section on historical origins, one on science, one on philosophers and poets, and other similar insights into the german people and their psyche.
By far the bulk of the book is descriptions of places and sights. It's oriented towards trips through various regions of the country, for example, my Germany books has sections on the Rhine, Heidelberg, Franconia, Munich, the Black Forest, Berlin, and many more. Sprinkled along the way -- like little treats -- are short articles that explain some particular artist, work, or symbol of the country. The Germany book has an article on Beethoven and another on the world's most ubiquitous car -- the Volkswagen Beetle -- an enduring and endearing symbol of German industry.
For each of the areas there are descriptions of the most interesting sights to see. There aren't any directions to get there, or admission prices, or hours of operations, so you'll need to either fill in the gaps with another guidebook, or you'll need to wing it a bit.
Only about 40 pages (roughly 10% of the book) are dedicated to logistics -- the "getting there", "money exchange", "hotel lists", etc.
One weak point in the book, in my view, is the fairly limited number of maps, although those that do appear are quite nicely done and very readable. I do like lots of maps, although it's not a big deal since I think that anybody traveling somewhere probably has, or can find, a good map. In Germany, the Michelin maps are quite good, and are often available in the U.S. at larger bookstores. (For Mexico, I always recommend Guia Roji maps).
Given the lack of detailed info on the sights, the fairly short logistics section, and the limited number of maps, I don't recommend APA Insight guides as a hands-on tool to use as you're trying to work your way through a city or country. They'll fail you if you rely on them. But, as an introduction to a country and culture, the APA Insight guides are tough to beat. They really whet your appetite for things to see and do, and they really do provide some insights into a foreign culture.
For the armchair traveler, APA Insight Guides are the best. For the traveler trying to figure out how to get to a monument or castle, or trying to figure out whether there's time to work in one museum today, the APA Insight Guides come up a bit short.
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