The DK Eyewitness Travel Spain Guidebook is a heavy and colourful guide, it came through my letter box and I didn´t put down for hours, lucky for me it arrived on a Saturday. I flicked through it from front to back, checked out the places I know and then began from the beginning.

It is a guide that brings alive the vibrancy of Spain, showing its landscape and monument through the bright and cheerful glossy pages that are packed with endless photos and illustrations. Every page had me wanting to go there and making lists in my head.

Covering a country the size of Spain is a difficult task to achieve but this guide does it surprisingly well. Touching on Spain´s history, gastronomy and culture with plans, maps and drawings it´s a great book for trip planning and will have you wanting a longer trip than you have planned. I´ve got one or two itineraries floating around my head now.

Included amongst the 720 pages are the famous monuments but there are also many many more lesser-known monuments shown here to visit. There is a huge amount of information and facts crammed within the pages of this book, what to visit, where to stay, where and when the local market is on, which traditional dishes of the area to try and so much more.

What it doesn´t do is give details of how to get there and supply timetables or travel possibilities but that, compared to what it does provide is, in my view not important.

Even if you´re not planning a trip to Spain in the near future, as a gift for a lover of Spain or as a coffee-table flick-through book it´s really very good indeed. I know I´ll be dipping frequently through these pages.

I received my book as a free review copy, it is available to purchase through Amazon.