UK Holidays - Frommer's England 2005

Completely updated every year (unlike most of the competition), Frommer's England features information on all of the castles, cathedrals, palaces, and pubs that await you. In-depth, accurate, and detailed, Frommer's offers authoritative but fun-to-use coverage of all the top sights, plus lots of off-the-beaten track towns and attractions. We'll show you the best of London, including its world-class theater scene, then set off to explore the rest of England. You'll admire the dreaming spires of Oxford, hike the windswept moors and the lovely Lake District, go antiquing in the Cotswolds, tour the spectacular gardens and manor houses of Kent, and meet the locals in the most charming country pubs and tea houses.

You'll find candid reviews of a huge selection of accommodations in all price ranges, from chic boutique hotels and stately country house lodgings to homey B&Bs. It's all accompanied by dozens of color maps, the latest trip-planning advice on everything from bargain airfares to rail passes, money-saving tips, and a complete shopper's guide.

Frommer's very informative 60 page section "Planning Your Trip to England" is a quick and important read. The guide's strongest section is `London', top rate and excellent. Porter & Prince are also the author's of the recommended guide: "Frommer's London 2003". The `London' section in this book has been taken from that guide.

Frommer's publications tend to be for the more affluent travelers but they do offer more help for those hoping to find "inexpensive" lodging (less than $100 a night) in England. Their "Very Expensive" range is unusually $400-$1000 per night, sometimes more. However, all of their recommendations are reliable and their description is very good.

Unlike, Fodor's, they make life a bit easier by giving you the actual cost of accommodations and restaurant in both British pounds and dollars. Almost all of the hotels have website listing and seeing your accommodations in color via the web is a major help.

However, this is not true for the restaurant listings, even though now many of the top restaurants have their own websites with vivid photos and menus -- I found no addresses listed.

A guide book worth its salt has to guide you with quality maps. The few maps that Frommer's uses are graphically laid-out with restaurants and accommodations numerically located on each map. However, this guide cries out for MORE MAPS. This is a very weak area in this guide that could be easily remedied. Also, but not a significant deterrent, Frommer's only has nine pages set aside to introduce you to 2000+ years of English history.

Do note that Fodor's includes Scotland and Wales, whereas this book, Frommer's England 2003, is strictly England. So, if you want one guide to take with you to see `England' then this is the guide to get. It is reliable, informative and very well laid out. Strongly Recommended.

We are Anglophiles, and we feel that we grew up with this guide. Except for a few misses, we've traveled to England almost every year to renew our friendships with the many people we've met through this intensely personal and extremely practical guidebook.

What we've always liked about Frommer's England is its ability to cut through the touristic hype and to connect its readers immediately to the heart and soul of England, recommending the best of its people and its most intriguing places. We are not a wealthy family; vacation hours are precious to us, and not to be wasted.

With Frommer's England, you get the feeling that the authors have been there long before you, discarding that which is of little use, and ferreting out the charm and appeal of this ever-fascinating and frequently changing place.

Although Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince keep changing and revising the guide, we admire how they keep recommending certain very special places, particularly those oases to which we keep returning.

Each year, the guide brings plenty of new things to see and do, but it also respects English tradition and knows that you're not touring the countryside for cutting-edge venues, although there's quite a bit of that as well. It follows the premise that you're in England to see where the lovely villages, the old stone manors, the country lanes, the old-fashioned tearooms, and the charming country houses lie. And throughout, there are accurate and very practical descriptions of the kinds of places that offer comfortable lodgings and good food in a wide array of price brackets.

Within two or three more years, we will have explored every part of this wonderful country, using Frommer's England as our trusty compass. My husband and I have agreed that once we have completed this self-imposed "assignment," we'll start all over again, following the same trail originally blazed by us in 1969. With us, we'll carry Frommer's England, not just as a guidebook, but as a trusted friend who has never led us astray.