Northern Spain Insight Guide

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View books by Teresa Farino.

Packed with detail, very accessible - Rated
A great combination of photographs and well-informed text, this is a great book to accompany any holiday in the region. It combines cultural and natural history, kicking off with easily digested chapters on food, drink, people, history, wildlife, architecture and other key issues. Then, it takes you on a tour of the regions. Each of these chapters is accompanied by an excellent, clear route-finding map and simple but clear maps of major towns. A great idea is the brief digest of phrases not only in Castillian but also in five local languages and French, too. There's a limted but practical guide to places to eat and stay, too.

Good overview - Poor on detail - Rated
This book is one of the worst guides I have ever had the misfortune to purchase.

As with most insight guides it gives a good overview on the area, its people and culture. However, individual area guides are sparse and miss a great deal of items which are well worth a visit.

The town maps provided for each major town are appalling and cannot be used. Street names and names of squares are incorrect on many maps and on the map of Bilbao, they have 5 of the main sights in the wrong location on the map (they even misplace the Guggenheim). The top ten list of things to visit includes a church which when looked at in detail in the detail section is 'not of especial interest'.

Overall it is poorly put together, the information in it is unreliable and as such can't really be used. Buy something smaller and with more detail instead.

thank you insight guides - Rated
A search for books on Spain may reveal 2000 books but very few will be for the north of this great peninsular... why? because 90% of the english speaking world probably considers Spain to be a country bordering the mediterranean. Other than standing in the travelshop of VIPS or the May Book Fair in Madrid the book choice for those who want to see Atlantic Spain is very limited as a result. The Insight book is a good general guide to an area which seems as big as a continent with a geography, history and cultural diversity more varied than any similar region in europe. If you have not been to Spain or have already seen the south getting this book is a good option. The region is so big it is best to find one or two areas that suit you and head for them unless you have a month or more to spend.
Sadly only on arrival will you find the books pitfall is the actual local information is very generalised and you will be reliant on local tourist offices to pad it out a bit, The Rioja section is an example, from start to finish the coverage appears to be a day trip from Logroño the capital, it misses a lot about 'the Cameros' the mountain villages to the south, Alfaro as a town famous in Spain for it's storks, and the Balcon de Rioja and the Alavesa region on the north bank of the Ebro which as a Basque region is covered very lightly in that section although the two places are one and you will drive in and out of the two states all day. I was lucky and had the book whilst taken around by friends native to the area which only helped highlight the inadequacies as i found places missing, I was equally frustrated at the coverage of Navarra which was similarly limited. However it is a big place and hard to cover in one book, the autonomous states have good local guides often free that compliment this book with the missing detail. It really needs to be twice the size to start to provide the area with its much needed total referance guide