Moscow (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

Went to Moscow in December 2002 for 2 weeks for a funeral with my mother (I'm a hardened traveler in my 30s). I speak very little russian and read even less (i.e. none). I also took the Rough Guide book on Moscow. Didn't use the Rough guide after the 2nd day, stuck to the Eyewitness guide. Why? Because if you can't read russian your screwed - the cyrillic alphabet is like reading arabic; if you want to toodle around on the subway or walk the streets - nothing makes sense and it all looks the same. Pictures and maps (with the actual and phonetic spellings on them) are how you're going to make it work. Rough guide has no pictures - Eyewitness boatloads! I explored Moscow on my own - with no guide, no translator and no dictionary - only my eyewitness guide. I didn't get lost and I saw everything that I wanted to see. I didn't care that Eyewitness Moscow was published in 1998 - churches, museums and other places of interest do not move - prices change frequently anyway. It also cuts out a lot of the crap that other guides spend too much time on. This is a guide for seeing, doing and exploring. If you want a hotel guide, get a travel agent.

I travelled to Moscow in November 2002 and found this guide to be of great assistance in planning what I wanted to see, getting background information and in follow-up reading and reference after I returned. One use after I returned was in matching my photos to the pictures in the guide to label them and this worked extremely well. The pictures are beautiful, and the background information is extensive and helpful in understanding what you are going to see.

The one drawback is that the 1998 publication date makes this book not very useful in information on new hotels, restaurants or prices.

Compare guidebooks and I think you will see that this one is by far the best for detail, pictures and general information.

Highly recommended.

This is one of the best travel guides I have ever used. It gave more information than the private guides I hired. It includes some of the little known, "personal facts" as well as information on food, transportation and gifts to bring home. I highly recommend this book. It was so good, I bought the ones for my next two trips as soon as I got back from Moscow!

If I was taking just one guide, 'Eyewitness Travel Guide to Moscow' would be my first choice. Although it is starting to age (published in 1998) it is a good visual and historic guide to Moscow, with enough color photographs to both inspire and guide you.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is ideal to use to review with a tour guide the sights and areas that you want to see because of its diagrams, pictures and suggested itineraries.

The history and art sections are reasonably good for a guide book.

The restaurant and hotel suggestions are a bit stale, and the pricing is out of date (although the range of pricing is still reasonably accurate).

the maps weren't very helpful, and it was definitely not aimed at students with low budgets. nice pictures and good metro stations to visit, along with other good suggestions about interesting places to visit makes it worthwhile, but get a better map if possible.