Moscow
A pocket-sized city guide with a large-scale street map. “AA CityPacks” are specially designed for the short break city visitor. Organise your time with recommended day itineraries, walks and excursions. The Top 25 sights, arranged from west to east across the city, are highlighted and give you all the accompanying detail you need such as prices and opening times. The best features of the city are all described – galleries, museums, parks and much more. Information is presented in easy-reference lists – restaurants, pubs, bars, cafes, different types of shop, all kinds of nightlife – concerts, opera, cinemas, theatres, and places to stay to suit all budgets. Every guide comes with a separate street map and a protective plastic wallet…. More >>
the maps weren’t very helpful, and it was definitely not aimed at students with low budgets. nice pictures and good metro stations to visit, along with other good suggestions about interesting places to visit makes it worthwhile, but get a better map if possible.
The guide book doesn’t mention the reasons why you should avoid Moscow like the plague. I am not a negative person, but these facts are inescapable – and should be carefully considered.
Where to start?
1. The common people of Moscow are extremely unfriendly and rude, particularly if you are a foreigner. There is a gesture of dismissal and contempt, a shooing gesture with the hands, that says, “get out of here and don’t bother me.” Overall, there is a psychologically toxic environment which you must prepare yourself for, if you are foolish enough to go here.
2. The water is brown and the air has stinging pollution in it. At least boil any water you drink.
3. Avoid crowds. TB is rampant. Get tested for TB upon return, and then again 6 months later. Important: Insist on this, and detection will allow the docs to do timely treatment before an endemic infection sets in.
On the positive side, I met many interesting artists and singers. They perch like birds in the ruins of a decayed city…
Worst Travel Guide EVER!!!
We travel internationally at least 3-4 times a year on vacation with our family. Therefore, I always buy a travel guide to help us with our destination. Our trip to Moscow in August 2008 was no exception.
So bought this Eyewitness travel guide for Moscow because I heard it was a difficult city to get around.
This is the worst travel guide ever!!! It has absolutely no practical information on the tourist sites. What I mean it that it has NO operating hours, NO operating days, NO metro stop listed, NO cost of tickets, etc.
We tried three separate days to get into the Kremlin since this guide book was of no help at all. I truly thought we would have come all this way and not even get into the Kremlin since it is only open on certain days and the various museums themselves have different hours and only certain ticket booths sell tickets for certain of the museums. NOTHING is written in English at the sites. The lines are horribly long so it is not proactical to try to stand in each one of the 7 or so to see if you got it right. If you can not read or speak Russian you are doomed. Unless of course you have a worthwhile guide book.
We did finally get into the Kremlin with the help of a kind Russian soul who spoke some English but as it was I spent full price for my 2 kids since I did not realize there was a child discount as the guide book did not even mention that (or any pricing at all for the matter) Avoid this worthless book!!
I travelled to Moscow in November 2002 and found this guide to be of great assistance in planning what I wanted to see, getting background information and in follow-up reading and reference after I returned. One use after I returned was in matching my photos to the pictures in the guide to label them and this worked extremely well. The pictures are beautiful, and the background information is extensive and helpful in understanding what you are going to see.
The one drawback is that the 1998 publication date makes this book not very useful in information on new hotels, restaurants or prices.
Compare guidebooks and I think you will see that this one is by far the best for detail, pictures and general information.
Highly recommended.
good guide book if you are primarily looking for photos and maps. Not much specific info.