Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Montenegro through rose-tinted spectacles, 6 Jun 2007
Annalisa's book is the only guide you are likely to find which focuses entirely on Montenegro. However, approach with caution. It is undoubtably a useful book to have with you on your trip, but I learned after a day or two on the trip to take her opinions with a pinch of salt.
If you are relying on public transport, this book will only weigh down your backpack, there is no public transport info aside from locating bus & train stations on maps.
Use the guide to plan your itenerary and to get a vague idea of what you can expect to find in each place you visit. Annalisa's descriptions of Montenegro's towns and cities are optimistic in the extreme, and after a while you will not be able to trust her on what really is beautiful and worth visiting and what could be skipped. This is especially true of her way-over-the-top piece about the town of herceg Novi (avoid).
Accommodation and restaurant listing are arbitary and not concise. Prices quoted throughout the book are inaccurate, although this is probably a factor of the passing of time. However, where the book fails most is that it just doesn't illustrate the real attrations of this amazing little country. Montenegro is a rough diamond and should be approached as such, rather than be led there through Annalisa's rose-tinted spectacles.
When you visit Montenegro, you will experience a country and people in transition. Now independant from Serbia, the country is seeking to identify itself as a unique nation, which it is. Experience a nation which is recovering from years of economic turmoil and enthusiastic about it's future role in Europe. In Montenegro you will glipse back to the 80's and meet people who are looking forward to the future. There is alot more to this country than Annalisa has described, and taking this book word-for-word may leave you unfairly dissappointed.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fails Miserably on Practical Details, 5 Sep 2006
This book is probably the poorest one in Bradt's unique series of guides covering the relatively little-known countries of the Balkan region. While most other Bradt guides successfully combine insightful background info and coverage of sights with providing the useful and necessary practical travel information, this one fails on the latter front miserably.
Coverage of accomodation option was often poor, especially lacking the budget options - and for some towns listing no places to stay at all! Even worse is the complete lack of information on public transport. The author very obviously toured the country by car and couldn't be bothered to check out the existence and fares of buses and trains that are used to get around by most independant travellers!
While coverage of sights was mostly OK, it also proved pretty bad about, of all places, the nation's capital, Podgorica!
Without exception all those people whom I personally met using this guide were quite unhappy with it.
One can only hope that the publisher will eventually take note and either get a new author to rewrite the book, or provide some strong guidelines to the current author on what practical details are needed to bring this book in line with the quality of Bradt guides to the neighbouring countries: the ones covering Albania, Serbia and Hungary are all very good and could serve as a model.
Until that happens, you have a choice of buying this book just to plan WHERE you want to go (but not HOW!), or simply wait till you reach Montenegro and visit the tourist offices there that will provide you with just as many useful ideas on places to visit, and more heplful info on transport and accomodation!
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Are you Annelisa Rellie?, 23 Jan 2007
I can't believe that anyone who read this book and went to Montengro would think it was good. The maps are awful. The practical information is rubbish. I can barely say anything about this book which doesn't contain an expletive. The worst thing is that she recommends some places to stay that are owned by the most untrustworthy, con - artists i've ever met. She paints a picture of this land as a beautiful unspoilt wilderness of noble people... blah blah blah. The woman who wrote it used to be an ambassador's wife and is currently writing a book on impossible dreams. Her description of the worlds first ecological nation (which has nearly 150 wolves in it, and pays hunters E15 each for their heads, which has more trash than India, where I spent three weeks and saw not one mammal, where the Dalmatian Pelican's numbers have been reduced from 30,000 to 14 due to trophy hunting ... I could go on) are 'gossamer in comparison' to the real Montenegro - they sound like an advert written by the ministry of tourism. A travel guide should give practical information, not wax lyrical about poetic nonsense. Not to say that the country itself is bad in any way, it's just not the place that she describes.
She should carry on writing about impossible dreams, it would seem that's what she's good at.
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