Product Description

The Rough Guide to Greece is the ultimate handbook to the Greek mainland and the islands from cosmopolitan Athens to the little-known one-village outcrops. The guide includes a 24-page full-colour introduction, with the authors pick of the country's highlights in the 'things not to miss' section. Every metre of this diverse country is covered, from the stunning beaches of northeast Pilio to the dramatic Byzantine town of Mystra. For each area, there are comprehensive and insightful listings of the best hotels, guest houses, restaurants, cafes, bars and clubs. There is also informative advice on a wide range of activities, from bird-watching at the Prespa lakes to windsurfing at Vassiliki and hiking on Mount Olympus. Finally, the Contexts section provides detailed accounts of the country's history, culture, mythology and wildlife.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #664750 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1168 pages

Daily Telegraph, London, UK
For independent travel, the Rough Guides are the most useful source.

CondŽ Nast Traveler, USA
The best currrent general guidebook for Greece.

Daily Mail, London, UK
Famously honest.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive, concise, relevant, practical!
We just came back from a 3 weeks, modest-budget, partly backpacking, partly car-rental trip around Rhodes, Crete, and Peloponnese. We deliberately stayed off the beaten tracks as much as possible. We used this guide along with French "Guide du Routard" and Michelin guides. I picked this guide against the Lonely Planet one based on an excellent experience with the Corsica rough guide last year.

This Rough Guide was above all very practical -- it simply is amazingly detailed, and what's more, it's mostly right. The rooms , hotels, and restaurants suggested were spot on. Very few outdated entries.

This guide also includes much relevant background info on Greek history, politics, food, an so on. This made for a much more interesting trip.

The paper was very thin yet high quality, making this guide even more worth its space in my pack.

This is definitely not the guide for organized tours -- the authors make no secret of their disdain for package tourism and the spoiling it often brings. But, for the independent traveller, this is the best guide I have found in English or French.

Capable enough to get you through high tide...
Most of my friends often recommend the Lonely Planet books, especially for those of us who can't mortgage our homes for one-night stays in hotels listed by Frommer's and Fodor's guides. But I went with Rough Guide for my trip last summer to Greece, and while some of the maps weren't as detailed as they could might have been, most of the recommendations were spot on.

Many nightspots get renovated; names get changed, etc. That's something the editors can't really help with. But any restaurant or bar I went to (listed in the guide) was above-average, if not better than they claimed.

The historical data was also well-balanced; so you're not bored to tears with it, and yet it's detailed enough to keep you reading through it. Bonus marks for the great inclusion of the Greek music coverage (flawed, but excellent), and the price of the book is decent.

Brilliant! The best of the Greece books
A terrific guide to both the Greek mainland and the islands. Spent several months trawling around the country, at first with several guide books, Fodors, Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, etc., but finally found that the Rough Guide knew the country best, and made for a more entertaining travel companion, so I ditched the other books about three weeks into the trip. Absolutely the only book for Greece if you (a) like good food and nightlife and (b) have a serious interest in the cultural context of Ancient Greece. Plus their commentary on modern Greek history was very helpful, must admit I didn't know much about it until I arrived.

You can't go wrong with this book.