Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp

I like to see what's there before I go somewhere. This book makes it easy to do. It covers history, culture, shopping, food, and does it all with great color maps, photos and drawings. This particular book is slim and light so it will be easy to pack.

Perfect for Belgium. Brussels, Bruge, Antwerp are all well done. The quality of the DK series makes them the pick of the class, but heavy. It's the only guilde that emmanates a feel for the area's architecture. I used the hotel section comparatively with other guides. It finished slightly ahead. What is unusual is a non-tourist perspective is part of the review mix. I am an intelligent successful high tech businessman and not particularly interested in clowns staying away from people that are. To me travel is not an entertainment video. It is a mix of pleasure, leisure, and learning while keeping in reasonable cost effective contact with the world that enabled me to make the trip. This is the one area that could use improvement. "Internet access" is a meaningless description. What's the cost, how fast, what mode, where, and how often is it available? For decades the hotel telephone has been the ultimate rip off tool. Now it's morphed into the cell phone realm. Despite what you have read international calling is still very expensive. When Best Western doesn't charge for the identical serice that Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, etc. do is it very clear whose happiness is primary despite what the brochure says. A lot more help on this would be most appreciated. Kudos to DK for giving local food a serious look. The inclusion of small, medium and high end places is a refreshing and useful change. For some reason no mention is made of the "ladies of the evening" displaying their virtues through sidewalk level bay windows along the street parallel to the Brussels airport-to-central station route about five minutes before it ends. After a long flight it provides a little spice that was missing in the airline food.

This was an indispensable tool my navigation of Belgium. I also purchased the Top 10, published by DK just so I would not miss anything. I liked the large maps and the clear directions to the venues. The pictures were GREAT. This book greatly enhanced my journey.

DK guides are by far the best for any trip -- their black-by-block walking guides just can't be beat.

If there's something really wrong with this brand new eyewitness travel guide it's the subtittle: the book covers almost all important, interesting and delightfull pieces of land of this wonderfull "pocket" country and I'd rather nominate it: "Belgium: the essencial". This time, DK (editors) brought us a correctly concised, essencial, plum weight good-to-take-away guide, free from futile information. It has only 192 pages but it's far better than the 224 pages of Stockholm guide, for instance, that describes "atractions" to expent the time of a whole life and tells nothing about the exciting city of Upsalla, just 35 miles from the capital. The Guide describes the "you should go" cities of Leuven, Namur,Mechelen,Liége,Mons and others sites besides the "You must go" ones of Brussells, Brugge, Ghent and Antwerp. It's plenty of perfect tridimensional pictures, maps, texts, photos and special boxes with further detailed information, all of them pieces of art that give you a sistemic understanding about WHAT your mind and the 5 senses should "catch". One more comment: They clearly put in de limelight the flemish-speaking regions of the country. The French ones could receive more attention (perhaps more graphic details). The French-speaking comunity worldwide may not appreciate this uneven treatment. Anyway, the book's tittle and its price doesn't sell a mousetrap as a good camembert, so .... in this edition, The Dorling Kindersley Series almost meet again the perfect and final formula of a travel guide, as they did in the New York, London and Istanbul's editions.