Eyewitness Travel Guide to Amsterdam

One of Europe's most picturesque cities is vividly captured in more than 600 full-color photographs, street-by-street maps, and 3-D aerial illustrations in DK's Eyewitness Travel Guide: Amsterdam. A city of canals and waterways, Amsterdam is rich in culture and history, the home of many numerous sights including Joods Historisch Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Gothic structure Oude Kerk, and the famous red-light district. A panoramic canal walk leads you around the rings of canals and offers a special foldout with precise directional illustrations that spotlight the opulent townhouses lining the canals and their unique architectural style. Beyond Amsterdam, the guide covers the cities of Rotterdam, Den Haag, Haarlem, and Bloombollenstreek with photos of the regions many varieties of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. Amsterdam's history, art, and culture of its people are captured in this comprehensive reference to the Netherlands' largest city.

I would NOT, however, recommend that you take this guide with you. It weights 1 pound 3 oz; and we always travel light. So what we recommend is to do your Stateside planning with the DK guide and use a lighter one to accompany you on your travels. It's a pity, because the transportation and street maps alone are worth the price of the guide.

A major plus for us is that we chose to visit the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen partly because it looked interesting in the book; and it turned out to be by far our favorite stop.

Like other DK guides, this one has an excellent "Practical Information" section on currency, banking, telephoning, and public transportation. It also have colorful pictures of the type of food you might encounter in Amsterdam's restaurants. (And do try the raw new herring with onions and pickles: If you're a sushi-head like me, you will be in heaven.)

Where I would not use this guide is for names of specific hotels and restaurants. The information on these is presented in tabular format and leaves off many interesting sidelights that would be important for us as travellers, such as roominess, charm, family ownership, and other intangibles.

It's well worth the somewhat steep price to buy this book if you're planning a trip to the Netherlands.


Just AWESOME.   January 24, 2000
James P. Wisdom (PA United States)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful

This Amsterdam guide was given to me as a gift by my Opera-Singing buddy for my trip to Amsterdam for the Millenium, and I thanked him heartily upon my return, hugging and clapping his back. This guide has an enormous amout of information, pictures, maps, lists, graphics, detailed street-walks and ratings, all wrapped up in a durable, very easy to use, SMALL, portable package. I threw it in my back pocket when we were walking the streets, pulling it out periodically to check if we were going the right direction. Convenient, easy to understand, indespensable.


More than a guide!   August 13, 1999
Vinko & Antoanela Carija (vcarija@public.srce.hr) (Trogir, Croatia)
8 out of 17 found this review helpful

Whithout this book Amsterdam will be less interesting. Many details will pass behind guest without awaking his explorative spirit. Book is full of information which help reader a lot, during chosing a hotel, restaurant or saving from pickpockets. This is a first book that we actually use, nine more to go (Rome, Paris, ...).

"If you don't use this excellent book.

During your Amsterdam visit.

Everybody will see in your look.

How you miss it."


Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!   May 23, 2002
Doulos (USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

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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 Amsterdam
........................Amsterdam on the Map
........................History of Amsterdam
........................Amsterdam at a Glance
........................Through the Year (events, holidays)
............Amsterdam 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.

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.

............Travel Information
........................Planes, trains and automobiles, signs
............Street Maps
............General Index
............Phrase Book

Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Amsterdam", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Amsterdam 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.

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.


Eyewitness Guides are the way to go!   August 10, 1999
Becca (farresr@eou.edu) (Oregon, USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I have used Eyewitness Travel Guides every time I've travelled outside of the US. They're amazing! Beautiful pictures, excellent information, great history...don't leave home without it! It's well worth the $20!