Fodor's In Focus Santa Fe: with Taos and Albuquerque (Travel Guide) Paperback – May 20, 2014

This was a perfect purchase! It was small, so it was easy to carry, but it was really packed with information about Santa Fe. It also included smaller sections about Taos and Albuquerque as well as detailed descriptions of several day trips from Santa Fe. It was also very inexpensive.

Great little guide focusing on the popular areas of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos. Good information about things to do as well as restaurants.

I take this with me on my trips to Santa Fe, etc. I don't know of a guidebook that's any better although I don't agree with a lot of its evaluations and recommendations.. I have the 2014 edition as well as the 2018 edition. I think the older edition is better. I also get information from web sites and the New Mexico Magazine and the Adventure Guide put out by the state. There's no substitute for experience. So go and see and take this book along. It's helpful.

This is just what I wanted! We were in Santa Fe for just a few days and we found the advice in this book very helpful. we got the eBook version and were happy with it. Easy to search and it's right there on my phone. We found the opinions to be right on!

I ordered this guide because I was planning to be in the area and I thought I might pop over to Taos for a couple of days. But after perusing this guide for an hour I knew that I could not just spend a couple of days. I'd be in the area again next year and would plan a long trip. Taos/Santa Fe/Albuquerque is not an area to zip through. This looks like a place to stay a while and savor.Although I have some reservations, on the whole I think this guide should be quite useful. I got several ideas for my trip while looking at it. For example, when I saw that the area is accessible by Amtrack, I began to entertain the possibility of taking the train at least one way. (Flying is not a lot of fun these days.) There is also a New Mexican rail line from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. When I saw that one can rent bicycles in some locations, I have determined to include at least one day of cycling, rather than hiking a nature trail! What I like about this guide are the suggested day trips (which can save a lot of planning time), the museum listings (complete with prices, hours and web addresses), and the suggestions for activities.From my previous experience with Fodor's guides, I think they tend to cater to well-heeled couples who prefer the beaten track. I'm very suspicious of the recommendations for dining and lodging, as in the travel industry lots of perks are given to travel writers that are not given to the general public. Sometimes the recommendations border on advertising. What's missing are those places that might appeal to people other than the retired couple with unlimited funds. When I travel I want to eat where the locals eat. I want to find that family-run, working-class restaurant that makes the best Mexican food in town, and the best place to get breakfast while absorbing the local color. I don't see that in this guide.As usual, Fodor's ignores the literary traveler. D.H. Lawrence lived in Taos for two years and was visited by Aldous Huxley while he was there, but I could find no mention of either one of them in this guide. I'd like to know if there's anything left of where he lived. In his Memoirs, Tennessee Williams mentions visits to Taos, which he called "the lesbian capital of the world." I'd like to know more about that, too. I wish they had included a section on the writers who had lived and worked in the area.That said, the guide is a convenient size for traveling and, supplemented by some Internet searches, could be extremely useful. It's not a bad place at all to start.

This was a perfect companion book for our trip to Santa Fe last week. We used the downtown map more than anything. I found that there were lots of really good restaurants that were not included in the book. But this was very helpful to keep in my purse and use as we walked around town.

Found this most useful on our recent trip! I like the compact size which made it easy to slip into my bag.

I never leave town without a Fodor's guide. My first one was Europe on $5 a day in 1971!!! The reviews are always right on and the maps and walking guides are so helpful. Love, love , love them!

This was only a somewhat helpful book for us, but I know that different people use travel guides for different purposes. We wanted a focused discussion of the history and important sites of Santa Fe. The book included no discussion of the history, however; and "exploring Santa Fe" accounted for a mere 18 pages (pp. 26–44). I suppose I imagined something just a little bit more like a Michelin city guide where you get almost room-by-room descriptions of important museums and galleries; but here a world-class museum is likely to get just a paragraph in total. A really big deal for Santa Fe, one of its great appeals, is the creative interplay of Anglo, Hispanic, and Indigenous cultures, but the book shows little interest in that. Now, to be fair, the book is full of information about other things — where to stay, where to eat, night life, sports — and so it will be more useful to those who want a guide book to tell them about those things. My own feeling is that Internet research will usually give you more up-to-date information. A section on shops was more useful, though after my visit to Santa Fe I found I might have selected differently.