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Good .... but negative - Rated
A good guide, especially if you are the type that like reading a bit. The rough guides are more text than for example the lonely planet ones.
I like reading a bit and like the detail and the history section, so this was good for me.
The big drawback is the negative point of view of the author. He seems to find all things that are wrong with Cyprus. If you buy this guide, which is very good in many ways, don't let this overwhelm you. The problem with focusing on the negative is that you miss out on the small pearls that are good and beutiful in the middle of the less-than-great aspects of Cyprus. As an exampel Agia Napa is a tourist development disaster - true - but there are also interesting and nice things to do - such as going beach hopping (trekking) along the coast and catching a taxi back. The mini-coves you will find are not spectatuclar but quite good and far better than what you likely have at home - and here and there you can be all by yourself. So ... the good part of the tourist development disaster is that you can always walk up to the main road and catch a taxi anytime. Use this to your advantage, rather then focusing on the negative.
As for the food. Sure it tends to be hearty and not very refined. But the hearty bit also means you can probably split a 2-person meze platter among 2 adults and 2 children, saving some of your travel budget. The author just misses seeing the positive aspects - like in this example - too often.
As for correctness I get the feeling that this author spends too little time on Cyprus. This is fueled by the fact that the author also writes the Turkey one and co-authors the Greek guide. How much can one man cover and still be reliable?
Food sections are good. Example places are worth going to. But I also wonder if you can really trust an Englishman to tell you which restaurant has good food and not? [This is both a joke and not :-)]. Even though good where recommended, it always seems to have a faint similarity with good pub fare. And if eating at a really good pub is the best you can imagine, we've got a problem ... I got the same feeling for the Crete Guide btw (which is better and not as negative by the way - as for food we simply found too many equally good and better restaurants through other recommendations, to make us wonder how some suggestions were chosen).
But ... at the end of it ... it is still a good guide very much worth reading and to me much better than the micro-size 4 colour quick-reference like guides that may be too superficial. And although the Rough Guide sure has some improvement opportunities I will still pick up the guide for Mallorca which is the next place we're going.
A worthy Tome - Rated
Rough Guide? How much more in depth can a guide book be?
For me this book goes into far too much deep and dull detail.
The Kourion for example.
Is an enormous ruined town, breathtakingly beautiful-jam packed with treasures- including mosaics- to be roamed over.The Rough Guide delivers a fantastically boring history lecture.Its hard to retain the will to stay awake let alone the the enthusiasm to discover.
Erroneously it describes some of the Kourion as being "out of bounds or incoherant whilst excavations continue"...thats not true now (May 2007) Its all now open and accessable.
Do we really need to be told which wat to exit the car park?...
Its like this...Take your nose out of the book. Look left...nothing? Look right...monumental ruins? OK you choose which way to walk now...
So, if you need to be spoon fed facts and history. Also need to be told how to put one foot infront of the other this may be the book for you.
However, if you want something to whet your appetite and point you in the right direction then pick up something like the AA Spiral Guide to Cyprus- It keeps it to a managable minimum, including a brief "Top tips, hidden gems, and ones to miss"
