The Rough Guide to Egypt 7 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

The Rough Guide to Egypt 7 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)
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Manufacturer: Rough Guides
Average Customer Rating: Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.20455
EAN: 9781843537823
ISBN: 1843537826
Label: Rough Guides
Manufacturer: Rough Guides
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 832
Publication Date: 2007-07-30
Publisher: Rough Guides
Studio: Rough Guides
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Editorial Reviews:

The Rough Guide to Egypt is your indispensable guide to the oldest tourist destination on earth. The full- colour introduction highlights ''what not to miss'', from jeep or camel safaris in the Western desert to the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza. This fully-updated 7th edition includes expanded coverage of Nile cruises and diving in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, as well as up-to-date coverage of Cairo, with accommodation and restaurants conveniently organised by district. The guide includes brand new “authors picks” section highlighting all the top places to eat, drink and stay to suit every budget and new colour sections on temples, Islamic architecture and reef flora and fauna. The guide also takes a comprehensive look at Egypt’s fascinating history and culture and comes complete with maps and plans for every area.

The Rough Guide to Egypt is like having a local friend plan your trip!
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Great!!!!
Comment: Great book!!! Very informational. Going to Egypt in May, '09 and have learned alot from this book.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: EXCELLENT book!!!
Comment: In addition to providing me with the basics of where to stay, where to go, etc. RG gave me all of the cultural/historical information I needed to have a deeper understanding of Egyptian culture and better enjoy my trip. The enhanced discussion of "baksheesh" was particularly useful!!
Customer Rating: Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5
Summary: Not impressed
Comment: Let me mention a caveat before I go on to slate this guide. My trip was only to Cairo, and in the absence of any books at all that cover only Cairo, I used this guide which covers the whole country.

Where to start with my criticisms? Probably the maps. To say they were inadequate for Cairo would be a gross understatement. The city is complicated to navigate, and I would recommend that anyone travelling there and planning to spend time in the city itself should arm themselves with the best maps they can find. The ones in this book were absolutely awful. They bear little or no resemblence to what you actually find on the ground, the level of detail was wrong for any given situation (usually not detailed enough by a long way), they're badly organised (you end up fishing around for the next map you need as you're walking), and the only map that gives you an overview of the city is completely hopeless. The maps are also not contiguous, the gaps between the maps being just large enough to make long walks extremely difficult.

The next biggest problem for me was the advice on getting around. Before you arrive, the book appears to be particularly good on this subject, and was probably the main reason for my purchase since I was travelling alone and planning to arrange my own transport to the sights. Starting at the airport, their advice for finding a taxi was utterly useless. For getting to the various tourist sites, they appear to recommend the ubiquitous micro-buses used by commuters. Trying to use these is a joke, even for someone who took the trouble to learn some Arabic beforehand. The "signs" on the micro-buses are in Arabic, nobody on them speaks English, and when faced with roughly 100 of them in the bus station the situation is nothing short of hopeless. These are transportation strictly for locals, so don't waste your time trying, despite what the book might tell you. If you did ever manage to get on the right one, you'd be taking your life in your hands anyway. Why on earth would a guide book recommend this form of transport when a taxi can be hired for a whole day for around USD40?

Buy a book with more photos. It helps beforehand to identify the things you want to see, and they'll stick in your memory when you're actually there (I've previously used many other guidebooks with better photos). They also help a lot when you're lost or semi-lost (as I was most of the time when trying to navigate with the help of this guide).

The level of detail in the text was just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. It was ALWAYS either too much or not enough. Your choice is to spend a lot of time trawling through the prose before setting out and after that relying on your memory, or fishing through pages and pages of rubbish to glean what you need when you're actually on site.

A horrible guide book, don't buy it.
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