New Zealand (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

We have used the Eyewitness Travel Guide during all our trips to numerous places. They are consistently well presented and easy to use. The Eyewitness Guide to New Zealand was no exception. We are using to plan our itinerary and will use it during our stay there.

It's a nice and thick travel review of all the places most people would want to visit, when going to New Zealand for the first time. The smallish pictures are good for giving you an overview of the history and sites, and all of the major cities are covered.

This is a nice reference guide when walking around town -- there are good pics and maps and it's a pretty light book. However it does not provide many recommendations on where to stay/eat so it's not too helpful in the planning stage except to get you excited about what you are going to see. Probably could've gone without it, but giving it 3-stars for being pretty... :)

The DK books are always great, if a bit heavy because the pictures are so good. Another benefit, if you don't get there the guide makes you feel like you have been there anyway.

Eyewithess Travel Guides give the best overall overview of any travel book or other travel product - good organization; great pictures, maps and other graphics; interesting & concise text and descriptions about history, national foods and beverages, etc.; good suggestions for lodging and eating. They are excellet resource and reference books, but they are concise enough to give a relatively complete overview but short enough to quickly convey information, especially if you do not have a lot of free time.

I believe that carefully reading about a desination is important for planning any trip. The Eyewithess Travel Guides are the best way to obtain that overview and prioritize where you want to go. The New Zealand guide is enormous help to us with our planning.