I am a travel Agent going to Spain in Nov. I love Eyewitness Guide books and recommend them to my customers.

This series just keeps me amazed!!! I have 9 books of the Eyewitness Travel Guide and it hasn't let me down just yet! This book has everything you need!! It has the maps of the Metros, helpful tips on how to save money, it has guided walks (I took them and they are fabulous!!) It has a very detailed map of the center of Barcelona with Street Finders (VEEERRYYY helpful). It has colorful pictures and the story behind them.

I went to Spain on the Easter Holiday. Spent 4 days in Madrid and 4 days in Barcelona. I had been to Madrid before, but not in Barcelona. I went there with my boyfriend and it was his first time too. With this book we covered everything and didn't leave anything important out!! We didn't need any tour guide, since this book was our savior. I feel like I already know Barcelona like the palm of my hand, thanks to this book.

With this book we found hotels to stay, places to eat, where to shop, how to get to Barcelona, important places to go with their explanation, daily schedules, where to save money, where to drink cocktails, how to go around Barcelona safely, how to use the metro (subway), how to get around Barcelona...in all, EVERYTHING!! The days we spent in Barcelona, we didn't feel like tourists, but like we actually lived there, like part of the crowd. We had a blast!

Its worth the money and it even serves as a great collection. Once you buy an Eyewitness Travel Guide, you won't look at any other Travel Guide again.

For those who already knows Eyewitness Travel Guide, its another great publication and guarantee you won't be sorry!!

Eyewitness Travel guides are always lavishly illustrated, with gorgeous color photos of a city's highlights, cutaways of museums or important buildings, and discussion of an area's culture and historical background. In that way, this volume on Barcelona and the surrounding Spanish province of Catalonia does not disappoint; there is good stuff on road trips to nearby towns of historical or cultural importance; on food and the people of the region. There is also a very good 'survival guide' covering information on travel, the airport, police and emergency services, and a fair general index. Good information and a convenient map for the subway and train system is also included; very helpful!

The heart of the book is in the breakdown of Barcelona into its key areas, Old Town, Eixample, and Montjuic. There are guided walking tours offered, museums and restaurants are pointed out with phone numbers and rough prices, etc. Maps of each area are provided.

The maps are unfortunately the weak part of the book. They do not extend to areas in the far north of the town that a traveler will very likely want to visit; and they do not provide direct information on driving to or from the airport.

The book can be covered and highlighted in a few hours on your flight over to Spain. It is a concise and nicely done introduction to the city and the area, beautifully illustrated, that will make you excited to see the individual attractions. But you will want to invest in a really good city map as well as this pocket guide to fully explore the city.

I have several DK travel books that I have used over the years. dK Barcelona is extremely helpful with its color photos and tips to make my travel to Barcelona a success!

I usually like using Eyewitness Guides when I travel because they are very visual and have good images and cut-away drawings. Unfortunately, their guide for Barcelona is sadly lacking. One clue is that the book is literally quite thin compared to all the things there are to see and do in this city.

They provide 6 pages for maps, going from the eastern side of Montjuic to the Born district, and north but not quite north enough to show where Gaudi's Park Guell is located. Many of the small streets in the Barri Gotic and Born districts are not even labelled. The northwest portion of the city is not shown and neither is the eastern third of the city, and there are many sights beyond the range of these maps that may interest visitors, including several Modernista (Art Nouveau) buildings. Methods of transport into and around the city are vague - there is only a mention about the very convenient aerobus that goes from the airport to the centrally located Placa de Catalunya with no specifics about cost, frequency of trips, and stops along the way. The listings for hotels and restaurants could easily have been double what they show. Information about getting to outerlying sights such as the monastery at Montserrat was cursory, and trip times were not accurate.

By comparison, we supplemented our trip using the Time Out guide for Barcelona. It was much more informative, had more detailed maps and a sizable quantity of hotels, restaurants and shops covered. Cafes and restaurants are also conveniently tagged on the maps so it's easy to find a nearby place to rest and have a drink or some tapas after an afternoon of sightseeing. We ended up relying more on that guide while over there.

Unless the Eyewitness Guide is revised and expanded in the future, I do not recommend this as the only guide to use for Barcelona.

Very useful guidebook. Compact and easy to carry around. Easy to read with great pictures and street maps (includes metro line maps too). Very helpful in deciding which sites are most important to visit. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting an easy guide to travel around Barcelona and Catalonia.

I really liked the Eye Witness travel guide for Barcelona. It made it very easy to find sites and I love having all the pictures so you can determine if this is a site you actaully want to see. But I do wish that there was a top 10 list of places that you absolutely need to see. You never want to leave a city and think that you missed seeing something very important.

I went to Barcelona recently, and in the planning of the trip I consulted four guide books:

Lonely Planet's Barcelona City Guide
Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Barcelona and Catalonia
Cadogan Guides Barcelona (Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls)
Time Out Barcelona

All of them were good. I took two with me: Lonely Planet and Eyewitness.
The reasons I chose those two:

Eyewitness unfailingly has a good quality map, which in my view is LP's downfall. Eyewitness always includes a Street Finder Index which LP does not, and LP often misses out on streets other than the major ones, which can be very frustrating, especially in a city like Barca where there are many alleyways. I never use Eyewitness for hotels - the information is scant and usually more expensive than my (more Lonely Planet) budget, but it has fantastic colour photos and cutaways of buildings, and illustrations which place buildings within their streetscapes. It's a nice book to read on the bus or train going somewhere.

LP specialises in listings, which seemed to be more up-to-date and comprehensive than either Time Out or Cadogan, It also had a good Excursions section which helped a couple of times when I travelled beyond the city. I also liked a couple of the walking routes they recommended. Information on matters such as public transport is comprehensive and detailed. I like the chapters on history, architecture and food as well.

Time Out's great strength was in helping to plan. It had a huge array of hotels, and if you were especially interested in nightlife, I would take Time Out. I was there primarily for a conference, and many of my evenings were organised. And I'm also night a great nightclubber, perhaps contrary to Barca lifestyle!! If you are - consider Time Out. Its maps were pretty good, but not comprehensive for the area I was staying in, beachside Barceloneta.

That is where the Cadogan guide excelled. Its maps were so good that I pulled them out of the book and took them with me. I would have taken the whole book, but for the weight in my suitcase! Its info about places and sights seemed accurate and comprehensive.

I like Eyewitness Travel Guides books by DK Publishing. The Barcelona Eyewitness Travel guide is as good as I expected. I could recomend travel books by DK Publishing to everybody. It has all the information you need to feel comfortable in the foreign country.