Europe Travel Guide Book Recommendations
When we began planning for our trip to Europe, we literally had no idea where to start. This travel guide — Europe (DK Eyewitness Travel Guides) –
Though expectedly not as comprehensive as guide books written specifically for a country or city, this book has helped us pin down the cities we’d like to explore in western Europe, which is the focus of this book. For our trip, we used this book to narrow down the places of interest we’d like to explore and then get the city or country guides for places we planned to stay on for more than 2 days.
For our trip, we used the above-mentioned extensively plus the following:
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Series
The DK series will always have the edge for us because of its infographics-heavy explanations, which we are a sucker for. We also believe that travel is a feast for the eyes as much as anything else and the books do deliver in this sense.
London,
The Netherlands
Germany
Vienna
Switzerland
Paris,
Florence & Tuscany,
Prague,
Rick Steves
Rick Steves’ series feature great little tips and tricks to use for your travel in Europe. His guides read more like someone’s travel journal and are chock-full of useful workarounds and cute hand-drawn (though not very accurate) maps and tables.
Rick Steves’ Best of Europe
Rick Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door: The Travel Skills Handbook
Eurail Guides
Europe by Eurail 2010: Touring Europe by Train
Frommer’s Europe by Rail
All the above, coupled with advice from friends, travel forums, individual city websites, planning tools (train timetable, ticketing and route finder websites such as German-based DB Bahn, Austrian-based OBB, Swiss-based SBB) and phrasebooks, provided us with most of the information we needed to relatively breeze through Europe.
We’d recommend Europe by DK Eyewitness Travel Guides
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Evergreen Hotel Hong Kong – Review and Images
Evergreen Hotel Hong Kong
Evergreen Hotel located in the center of Kowloon area, accesible by MTR and close to Temple street night market. The location is good — you are just steps away from the night market, the MTR station Jordan is a 5-10 minute walk away, one of the fastest way to get to Hong Kong Island. Evergreen Hotel address is at 48 Woo Sung Street, Jordan, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
We stayed at Evergreen for 2 nights in April 2010 and booked the room through the online reservation system on their website.
The lobby of Evergreen Hotel Hong Kong. The receptionist processed our booking quite promptly. An additional deposit was charged to our credit card which was refunded upon check-out.
The daily room rates in HK$ for Evergreen Hotel Hong Kong, as listed on the Tariff board at the reception area:
Double Bed Room – $980
Standard Twin Bed Room – $980
Superior Twin Bed Room – 1030
Deluxe Twin Bed – $1280
Three Beds Room – $1280
Four Beds Room – $1480
Extra Person/Bed – $160
If you’re looking for a 3 bed or 4 bedroom accommodation in Hong Kong, Evergreen Hotel is probably one of the more affordable options available.
Evergreen Hotel Room
We booked the “No window Twin Bed Room”. The room is small, minimally decorated, a bit dim but most importantly it was clean, with, thankfully, no detectable odor, my absolute fear about windowless rooms. The double beds (a bit firm) came with two pillows each! Yay! Free wifi Internet access too. All hotels should have free wifi access. *demanding*
View from the beds — writing desk, chair, bench, small television. The room as you can see, is somewhat spartan with a 90s vibe. Its covered with oldish carpeting but thankfully again, no musty odor.
The mini bar niche beside the writing desk: cup noodles, nuts, kettle, drinking glasses, cups, saucers, sachets of tea and coffee and refrigerator
Fridge stocked with mineral water, soft drinks and beer.
Bed-side controls – switches for the lights and TV. We tried turning the knob with the music note but there was nothing on. What? No muzak to accompany my sweet dreams?! Refund! LOL kidding.
Paper thin bedroom slippers in two colors. Yes, they are literally paper thin and very slippery when used in the bathroom. Wear if you want an element of unnecessary danger in your life. ^_^
Evergreen Hotel Bathroom
The bathroom in our room is clean and well-maintained. Lighting here was kinda dim, just like in the sleeping area (if I had one complaint about this room this would be it)
According to our travel partners who stayed next door, water heater took quite some time to heat up but we had no such problem.
In the bath tub/shower area, a Lux shampoo/bath gel dispenser. All budget or mid-range hotels should have a soap dispenser instead of tiny bar soaps or mini shampoo bottles.
Hairdryer
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Disposable razor blade
Shower cap
Shower gel/shampoo dispenser
Evergreen Hotel Buffet Breakfast
Buffet breakfast was included in our room rate. The spread includes: tomato based pasta, hard-boiled eggs, congee, wonton, salad, bread, cracker, jam, butter. It was alright. The furnishing at breakfast area brought me back to the late 80s. ^_^
Conclusion
We didn’t have high expectations about this property and the hotel did okay to cater to our basic needs. We would consider staying at Evergreen Hotel again if we were on a budget. Though it looks old (with 80s-90s furnishing to boot) it’s great value for money. The room was clean and location is convenient and, with free buffet breakfast and wifi access, we don’t have much to complain about.
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Filed in: accommodation, asia, hong kong
