Syria (Bradt Travel Guide Syria)

Good book Helped in my travel

I just returned from two weeks in Syria with a friend who had brought Darke's guidebook with her, and we found it extremely useful. We had no trouble finding the sites and amenities she describes, and her accounts of sites outside Damascus are thorough and well-informed. She has done her homework on the history and archaeology, and the book contains dozens of helpful vignettes about daily life, customs, dress, language, religious practice, etc. that illuminated what we were seeing. The book is well-written and we enjoyed the incisive and occasionally tart asides. We were mid-level tourists, not budget, and it may be that the guide is better suited to the former. For the first-time traveler, it offered just the quantity and quality of information that were needed.

As someone living in Syria for over a year, I cannot recommend this guidebook, except for someone on a package tour, using the guide only for information on tourist sites. For independent, and particularly budget travelers, the guidebook is simply too unclear. The maps are extremely simplified, which is a serious problem in the winding alleyways of the old city of Damascus, and I find it hard to follow her directions to various restaurants having lived in the country for some time. As a visitor, I think it would be nearly impossible. The restaurant and hotel reviews are generally incredibly simplistic. For restaurants, half of each review discusses whether or not alcohol is served, while frequently ignoring both price and food quality. Hotels are described with similar brevity, and the focus is clearly on the upper end. The descriptions of various sites, as well as the historical, cultural and political background is reasonably well done. However, I don't think that it this guide has more information or is in any way clearer than the equivalent Lonely Planet guidebook, which I would recommend over this book for any traveler.

We tried to use this book during the week we spent in Syria. This book seemed the better choice, since it is the most recent guide. After half a day in Damascus, we gave up and went to buy the Lonely Planet Main flaws: -- the maps are completely unsufficient (we had to ask other travellers on the street to look at the maps in their books). Apparently the author has drawn them herself. Afterwards we visited Damascus again, with our other guide book, and we enjoyed Damascus a lot more. -- Lists of places to eat and to stay are very short, and contain very few budget places (typically 1 or 2, which is absolutely useless. Furthermore descriptions are rather brief). There is more attention to top end places. On the pro side: ++ The book spends much attention to history and culture, some parts are nice to read as background. Strange detail: the author claims that women never work as waitress in Syria, and in our week we saw several of them. Note: last year we use other Bradt guides (Zambia, Malawi), much to our satisfaction.

I went to Syria in November 2019 as a tourist and this guide is surprisingly good and still useful. The country is starting to return to its pre-war beauty in many places, obviously Damascus is less damaged than Aleppo or Homs. But Palmyra is still there, Maloula is still open for visitors, but the hotel that is described in the book has been destroyed for example. But a surprising number of things in the guide will be useful so I recommend this book to anyone travelling to Syria now. My hotel in Damascus was featured and acurately described, the hammam was there, the souks are accurately described (except Aleppo, sadly it was mostly destroyed, only a handful of shops have reopened) and a lot of the historical info is obviously just as relevant as it was before the war. Hands down this is the best guide for Syria I have seen and I highly recommend it.

I have just returned from a holiday in Syria and took this book with me. It is an excellent guide for the first time visitor to Syria. It is up to date and informative. While not completely accurate, all the essential information is good. I particularly liked the little background information inserts. The text is very readable and is interspersed with some entertaining personal comments. The photographs are rather small and clusteredd together at the beginning of the book.

a sad read since much of the heritage has been destroyed. A place I would have liked to visit but most unlikely now. The nearest sample you can get is in Berlin where there is the Aleppo Gate and the interior of a house

Before I travel anywhere, the first thing I do is check whether a Bradt guide is available. I've found these guides invaluable whether I'm visiting a country for a few days or staying for two years. Perhaps only the Footprint series can match the astonishing depth of detail provided by Bradt. Recommended for short or long stay, backpacking or 5-starring. You'll find them in here...

I bought this guide as research material for a book I'm currently writing, so the fact that it's outdated (and fawning over the dictator Assad, who is currently [June 2013] in the process of murdering his own people) didn't dissuade me. I'm not disputing that Darke knows her way around Syria. I am disputing that she has the foggiest idea about the medieval part of that country's history or the Crusades. What made me laugh with disbelief was Darke's assertion on page 200: "[The Templar's] ... leanings towards obscure oriental practices and heresies have been revealed now though through Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, and at the time lent them enormous recruiting appeal." Really, Mrs Darke? This is such laughably bad history that I would recommend ignoring whatever she says about the Crusades or the knightly orders (a heretic order wouldn't have been protected/endorsed by the Pope, and calling upon Dan Brown as any type of authority just makes me cringe). Dan Brown has very little "to reveal". Anyway, I'm not getting too far carried away. The book did the job I needed it for. As a door-opener to Syria's vast and rich history, it's dubious at best. Bradt can do much better.