Greece Hotels Travel - Eyewitness Travel Guide to Greece: Athens and the Mainland

From ancient history to modern hotels, no travel reference accommodates your needs like DK's Eyewitness Travel Guide: Greece, Athens & the Mainland. With more than 750 full-color photographs, this accessible handbook guides you in and around Athens and throughout mainland Greece using street-by-street and 3-D maps to direct you to all the main sights. The extensive Athens section highlights the history, art, architecture, and culture of this extraordinary city with special layouts devoted to the National Archaeological Museum, the Acropolis, and the Parthenon. Beyond Athens, the guide takes you to the ancient and medieval ruins abundant throughout the Peloponnese peninsula, location of the ancient cities of Corinth and Olympia. Three special sections covering wetland wildlife, the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum, and Mount Athos, detail prime features of Northern Greece. Other chapters explore Greece's Byzantine architecture, history, cuisine, and wines, making this the most complete and invaluable guidebook to Greece on the market.

The guide is divided into six sections: (1) Introducing Athens and Mainland Greece; (2) Ancient Greece, which includes historical, culture and mythological details; (3) Athens Area by Area; (4) Mainland Greece Area by Area; (5) Travelers' Needs, which covers where to stay and where to eat; and a (6) Survival Guide of practical and travel information, including a phrase book. You can go through the pages provided above to see exactly how things are laid out. Note: DK has a separate travel guide devoted to the Greek Islands.

I will not contend that this is the only travel guide you would need to plan your trip and/or go to Greece. There are several other travel guides that provide considerably more detail in terms of lodgings and restaurants. However, I would suggest that this is the travel guide you want to take with you while doing sightseeing; the other one can sit in your car, backpack, or whatever. For example, there is a diagram of a Byzantine church that provides more architectural detail than you would ever need to know. Other reviewers, who have actually used this book in Greece, have commented on how a lot of things are not marked in English, which made this volume particularly helpful. That is certainly good to know. However, at this point I am using it to figure out how to maximum the time I would spend there and where else to go besides Athens (obviously Delphi is the other must see place and then, probably, Mycenea).