Product Description

"The Rough Guide to Andalucia" is the definitive travel guide to the best attractions Andalucia has to offer. Whether you wish to explore the vibrant regions of Andalucia, taste the flavours of Andalucia's cuisine or discover the enchanting Alhambra palace and the White Town of Ronda; the "Rough Guide to Andalucia" has expert advice on what to see and do in Andalucia.Full-colour features explore the Semana Santa Holy Week and Moorish Andalucia; with comprehensive coverage on Andalucia's history, attractions and the unique flora and fauna of this stunning region. Fully updated and expanded, this guide combines up-to-date descriptions of the best hotels and hostels in Andalucia, the best restaurants and tapas bars in Andalucia and entertainment to cater for all budgets. You can explore all corners of Andalucia's varied landscapes with expert tips for outdoor activities, from rock climbing and hiking to kite surfing and mountain biking and the clearest maps of any guide. Make the most of you holiday with "The Rough Guide to Andalucia"!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6754 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 652 pages

Sunday Times, 2 April 2000, London, UK
The best guidebook

The Daily Telegraph, London, UK
The excellent Rough Guide to Andalucia.

Sunday Telegraph, London, UK
The best guidebook.

Customer Reviews

Head and shoulders above the competition
The latest edition (2006) of the Rough Guide to Andalucia is, quite simply, superb. It is attractively packaged, with some stunning colour photographs, and the layout is clear and logical, essential for a book containing over 700 pages.

Besides having copious information on the usual Andalucian highlights, there is a wealth of detail for those who enjoy getting off the beaten track, both in cities and the less frequented towns, villages and rural areas. I'm a frequent visitor to Andalucia and I was astonished to find information on out-of-the-way places that I know and that receive very few foreign visitors. This really is a book for those who enjoy exploring as well as visiting the big highlights.

There are guided walks around city neighbourhoods with notes on architectural highlights and historical background. I also enjoyed the countryside walks, invaluable for those who don't want to buy (or carry the additional weight of) specialised walking guides.

The "Contexts" section at the back of the book is extremely useful and informative, containing chapters on history, flamenco, wildlife and recommended supplementary reading.

Street maps of cities like Seville are notoriously difficult to produce in guidebooks because of the complexity of the labyrinthine neighbourhoods. However, the Rough Guide makes a pretty good job of it. In any case, the guide points readers to the tourist offices where larger, more detailed street maps are available for free.

Given the multiplicity of bus companies operating in Andalucia (and the rest of Spain), the guide wisely provides summaries of bus routes, frequency and journey duration. To try to do more would be confusing and would, in any case, be quickly out-of-date. Accommodation is simply price-banded; this is a good idea as accommodation in many places in Andalucia fluctuates widely according to season.

All in all, an essential for those intending to visit this region of Spain.

a useful travelling companion!
I used this guide during a recent trip to Andalucia and chose it for the same reason as Sam (see other review). I found it an extremely useful guide for planning an itinerary, and I did not happen upon any major inaccuracies. I guess if you're the kind of person who gets worked up about having to 'waste' an afternoon in Granada (sounds like heaven), or taking a wrong turning on a walk, then you're probably going to be quite hard to please. I took numerous wrong turns and wasted time in some fabulous places, I recommend you buy this book and do the same.

4th Edition already out of date by September 2003
This is the 6th Rough Guide, to various countries, that I've used on a vacation.

The (positive) sarcasm evident in the other books helped me to decide which specific visit to make, especially when time was at a premium. This helpful tool is not overly evident in the 4th edition.

Too many factual problems in a new guide occured (Example Granada . . . .page 533....Bar Ferroviaria closes and does not open, as reported in the book, at 2 pm ......on Plaza Pescedaria, no's 8 and 14 were recommended. One was overly popular, difficult to approach the entrance and the other is now a building site.

The city maps are 'logically' oriented and not "north" (as in most other guides, including the Rough which I've used) making quick use of the map difficult and comparison with other maps virtually impossible.

Insufficient attention is made regarding entry to the main cities:

We wasted valuable time getting to the Alhambra in Granada there is a ring road not well indicated in the guide.

The parking lot (for Gibraltar) in La Linea is a great 'find' but the guide should indicate that it may be reached by following 'Gibraltar' signs, no need to drive all the way through the alleys of La Linea.

The Sevill maps (pages 274/5 and 278) are not easily oriented to each other. In addition, arrival by road is too 'sudden', the 'old city' arrives without any pre-warning of landmarks, making navigation in moving traffic extremely difficult.

Similar comments can be made about Malaga and Almeria, in both cases, appropriate parking near the Alcazars exist, but the Guide did not help us find parking.

I can not comment on the other major cities, as we did not visit them.

As a general rule, the Andalucian inter city roads are very well signposted, but those in the towns and cities, not. I would therefore expect my guide to over compensate for this and give me better data, at least, to reach the first where excellent city/town maps are usually available.

Overall, I like the 'personal' approach of Rough Guides, still evident in the Andalucian 4th edition, but less so than in other guides.

There are many 'tips' which make it a worthy guide.

There is a great deal of logic in the placing of sites. In addition, if my route strays from that logic, the index is detailed enough to redirect me.

Will I buy another Rogh Guide? Only if the maps are north oriented. Too much valuable holiday time was taken from me entering the cities.