Category: (Book)
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great guide for planningReviewed by ck, 2010-01-30
The Unofficial Guide was a great resource for planning our trip to
DC. The attraction and restaurant profiles were invaluable for
prioritizing and planning our limited time. There were a few
errors, but every travel guide has some - things change.
We took this guide and Fodor's on our trip - Fodor's came in more
handy once we were at the sights, but The Unofficial Guide was a
better planning tool. I recommend both.
Great except for the food and restaurant suggestionsReviewed by a reader, 2009-12-05
For the most part, I found this guidebook terrific. The good parts
include:
-Very detailed and frank descriptions of the attractions (museums
and monuments). I found the information accurate and thorough,
including the info about who would best love each site, and which
parts of the museums were best if you had limited time to visit
them. Saying which Metro stations were closest to each attraction
was a nice touch, as was the information about how to use the
Metro, and the Metro maps. The map of the Mall with the locations
of each museum was good, too, although it would have been much
easier to use if it were at the front of the book instead of buried
in the middle. Trying to flip back and forth through the book was a
bit frustrating.
-It's not padded with color photographs you don't really
need.
-The information doesn't read like advertising/PR for each site.
It's clear the team of reviewers actually visited every place
listed and evaluated it honestly. These evaluations and description
were more than worth the price of this guide. I paged through other
guidebooks, and this was the most useful and practical of them all,
and the only one I bought and brought with me.
The bad/mediocre:
- The food and restaurant recommendations were way off the mark. We
got shut out of the cafes at the National Gallery of Art and the
Sculpture Garden Pavilion because the book didn't mention that they
closed earlier than the museums in which they were located. The
food court at the Old Post Office Pavilion was depressing and
unhygienic (my friend had to tell the guy at the Middle Eastern
station to use gloves, and he grumbled about it), and the food was
gross. The guidebook's idea of what constituted affordable food was
laughable. I would have appreciated more listings for cheaper
restaurants; its idea of a moderate price was somewhere in the
$30-60 for an entree range. There was also no info about which
museum/Mall area cafes and food courts would be best if you wanted
to avoid swarms of children.
- The phone number for the monuments at night tour was wrong. There
were a few recs for hop-on-hop-off buses that included a tour
guide, but no recs for the type that simply goes around the tourist
sites without a guide (i.e., less time-consuming and costly, and
doesn't skip a bunch of sites by rolling right past stuff you want
to see en route to places you might not want to visit; we saw buses
to that effect when we got there, but there was no info reviewing
them in this guide).
- As mentioned above, the maps included were great, but placed in
inconvenient places in the guide. There was no big map of the whole
city, which would have been nice, and there was no Circulator route
map (this is a hop-on-hop-off service meeting the above
requirements). Our hotel had Circulator maps, so we were fine, but
they should have been included in the guidebook.
- The neighborhood descriptions were pretty wimpy and short. The
descriptions of stores and restaurants in each area were in
separate sections of the book instead of listed within or right
after the neighborhood descriptions.
Despite those drawbacks, this is definitely way better than the
other guidebooks out there, especially if your trip will focus on
the attractions along the National Mall.
Great how-to guide for first-time visitors!Reviewed by ReadingHobbit, 2009-09-25
This is a great guide for first-time visitors to Washington DC. It gives advice for the best times of year to visit DC (considering weather and crowd levels), how to get around and use the Metro (without assuming previous knowledge of subway systems), when to visit the sites to avoid waiting in line, and which sites will appeal to different ages and interests. It also provides recommendations for hotels and restaurants, but its main strength, in my opinion, is making a new traveler feel comfortable touring the area confidently using public transportation and planning which sites to visit their first time in DC. Highly recommended!
Superb Travel BookReviewed by Robert Benlien, 2009-08-10
Almost perfect DC travel guide. I went to a national chain
bookstore and studied
every book they had on DC. The unofficial guide is the best for
general info on what to do,see and eat in DC.Good size not too
bulky but really concise. Maps and all. I also purchased DK
Eyewitness to DC because I liked the idea that it offered floor
plans of some of the major sites and color pictures. I highly
recommend the
Unofficial Guide.
Roben
Easy to read, user-friendly and informative guide to D.C.Reviewed by z hayes, 2009-08-08
I got three guides for our D.C. trip - one was the Frommer's
Washington D.C. for Kids [8th edition], Fodor's Washington D.C. and
"The Unofficial Guide to Washington, D.C. Of the three, I have to
say I found the tips and information in "The Unofficial Guide" the
most useful and practical. The format of the book makes it
extremely reader/user-friendly - each chapter focuses on one aspect
such as accommodations, getting there, getting around, etc. My only
grouse with this book was the part on the accommodations which I
felt was not detailed enough [ultimately, it didn't matter as I got
a good deal on a hotel].
What I loved about this book and found invaluable in the planning
stage and during the actual visit were the chapters dealing with
"getting around" [the authors wisely caution against driving, and
recommend the efficient Metro service], and "sightseeing". The
sightseeing portion of the book deals with all aspects such as
traveling with kids, the times of the day to visit certain
attractions [avoiding peak hours], the recommended ages for kids
going to certain places of attraction such as museums, and most
handy of all, the "touring strategies" where the authors have
helpfully grouped attractions by the metro stations, enabling
visitors to plan ahead. The guide also has a "time-saving charts"
feature which lists attractions by type and location. Those who
plan ahead of time will benefit greatly from reading the attraction
profiles [sure beats looking up each attraction online] which are
succint and provide just the right amount of information in helping
visitors such as myself and my family decide which places we wanted
to visit. Given the large number of monuments, museums, etc in
Washington, D.C., this was an immense help to us. Highly
recommended! Oh, the restaurant profiles were very useful too!
