I just got back from a trip with my mother and sister. We went to Munich, Fuessen, Wuerzburg, Rothenburg, and Triberg. We had 4-5 different travel books with us, and this one certainly won as the most comprehensive and easy-to-read.

I'm an exchange student living in Belgium for a year.. and this book is AMAZING! I'm determined to do everything in this book, and I'm already on my way! A few of the pricing things and anything to do with money is a little outdated (ie: the Diamond museum in Antwerp is no longer free). But the authors know their stuff, and (quoting Notting Hill) has actually been to Belgium, which is a plus. And not only do they know their stuff, they give it to you straight up. No sugar coating, nothing, and that's a huge plus. Go out, buy the book, then visit our amazing country!

I'm a big fan of the Lonely Planet series of books and maps - but the maps run the gamut of good to bad (see my reviews on Paris and London). This map was a very helpful tool in getting around Brussels with the very handy LP walking tour. Given a long weekend and this map and the matching LP book, you can cover Brussels fairly well.

Mr. Kossmans technique of comparing and contrasting The Netherlands and Belgium in dual contrasting chapters is brilliant. The reader will gain understanding a better understanding of these countries which share a similar culture and history, yet are so different.

This colorful guide to memorials/monuments of the World War I Battlefields of Ypres has 256 pages. There are suggested itineraries, maps, photos, eyewitness accounts, and info on how the monuments were built. A brief history of the battles is included, but this should not be interpreted as a complete history of the battles. Also listed are the various cemetery agencies.

Most attention is given to the forces of the United Kingdom, but there are items invloving all nations present in the Ypres battles.

Several side-trips with diving times are also added as a bonus to this helpful guide for travelers.

Once you've bought a Michelin map you'll never go back. Country names are offered in multiple languages (including the native language of that country as well as English). I navigated all over Germany and Austria with this map and we didn't have a single problem. Now I keep buying more and more of them and refuse to use any other brand. Michelin maps are printed one sided (which you may see as a plus or a minus).

I recently spent 4 days in Belgium, staying in Bruges and visiting Antwerp. (I stopped in Brussels briefly and used the internet to plan my few hours there.)

The small size of this guide gave me concern that it was too superficial. To the contrary, it provides a surprising amount of information by focusing on only the sites that could be covered during 2 days in each city. In 2 days, I covered all the recommended Bruges sites. In one day I covered about half of the Antwerp sites. I supplemented the information with books and audioguides available at the museums, as I would have done anyway, even with a thicker guide book.

In terms of contents, the guide provides a brief but useful overview of the region and for each of the three cities a city map (the usual great Michelin quality), listing of must-see sights (usual Michelin star system), and descriptions of those sites, even with several good pictures. It also provides an abbreviated list of hotels and restaurants, but these are not budget recommendations. (You'll probably need another source to find a hotel - I found mine on the internet.)

Best of all, this book is compact and light, and really does fit in any pocket you have.

Before I moved to Belgium from the US, I had heard that "you can consistently eat better in Brussels than you can in Paris." They were right. Belgium, and especially Brussels, has incredible food and this guidebook only adds pleasure to the search for the perfect waterzoi!

This looked like the best road atlas on the stateside market. I am going to use it for geocaching.com while I am in country, and I don't want to get lost in some Belgian farmland, as I suspect is easy to do. I will update if the real world, and the atlas world don't add up. This one is nice, if just for the amount of detail, and the city close ups. Durability is good, with the spiral binding.

From approximately 1312 to 1415 Bruges was the hub of European trade. English wool came to the Staple where it was distributed to the Flemish weavers, made into cloth and sold all over the world. Spices and silks from the caravan trade arrived in Venice and were carted to Bruges for sale in northern Europe. The bulky goods were moved about by the merchant; what about his money? One day he has many bags of gold coins and another day he has few or none. He needs to be able to deposit his gold somewhere and have a written certificate of deposit for it--that is, credit. So one merchant becomes a banker--he stays in one place, receiving and paying out. The coins--from all over the world--are a problem. The banker becomes money-changer. He takes gold coins to the mint to be melted down and made into local coinage.

The Lombards ran pawn shops, the equivalent of today's plastic credit card. Consumer debt, at fairly high interest rates, with the pawned objects as security, starts here. Very poor people who needed to borrow small sums from time to time depended on the Lombards--and hated them too. Notice that widows and others could invest in the pawn shop--loan money to the Lombards--and receive interest once a year. This was working capital for the pawn shop owner; otherwise he would have a warehouse full of objects and no money to lend to his customers.

Goods flowed and credit flowed and business boomed. There were defaults; too many defaults would drive the bankers, money-changers and Lombards into bankruptcy which in turn ruined merchants and manufacturers. Finally Bruges lost out to Antwerp.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author gives interpretations as well as facts. One can get a clear picture of Bruges in its heyday.