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49 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent summary guide, but with an agenda, April 4, 2010
This review is from: Europe on a Shoestring: Big Trips on Small Budgets (Lonely Planet) (Paperback)
I am planning to go to exploring in Europe this summer, and I wanted a guide to prepare me with some knowledge of the places I would like to visit. This book achieves that to a degree. The beginning of the book has some useful information about Europe in general, but it has a strange attitude that I noticed immediately. The authors have a bizarre (and sometimes preachy) liberal bias you wouldn't expect in a travel guide. This is evidenced through their attempt to guilt the reader into buying carbon offsets because of their plane flight (intra-European flights aren't considered as a viable travel option in this book... I wish it had more information about this alternate means). Also, the constant condescending opinions towards Europe's religious sites get a bit old. I wouldn't say I found it offensive, but I would prefer a more objective stance in the writing of my next travel book. It's just distracting. With this said, there is some really cool information about smaller towns and cities in Europe's countries that you may not find in a more traditional tourist guide. They maintain their goal of staying budget-minded throughout. I wish there was more emphasis on country-to-country travel, as that can be one of the most difficult aspects of a trip to plan. It looks I will have to buy another book to supplement this one. I recommend, but not as an all-in-one guide.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hot and Cold, June 4, 2011
This review is from: Europe on a Shoestring: Big Trips on Small Budgets (Lonely Planet) (Paperback)
I bought this book as a guide for my recent backpacking tour. This book is HUGE! It has useful information on almost every city or town that many backpackers wish to visit. However, the sheer size of it makes it extremely difficult to carry with you. I wound up making copies of the pages that I would need because I couldn't fit the book in my pack. Other than the size I found some suggestions to be less than desirable. In particular a hostel recommended in Brussels ( 2 Go 4) that is "located in the slightly seedy part of town" was the only hostel open when I made my booking. The description of "slightly seedy" is not an understatement; while it was a relatively cheap place to stay I feel that suggestions such as this should be left out. I found cheaper hotels to stay in, which are left out of the recommendations for Sleeping in each of the cities I used this guide for. The suggestions for places to see and where to find bike rentals, etc were useful, but hit and miss as well. For the most part, the recommendations were useful and informative, especially the Eating and Drinking sections. I will be using this book again in the future, but with much more caution - in particular regarding the Sleeping recommendations.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle version lazy, May 26, 2011
The Kindle version of this book is a bit lazy. The maps are too low resolution, so are a bit useless. What's worse is on the PC version, you can't zoom in. At least on the iphone version you can zoom in. Of course, all you get is a grainy mess. The index does not work, the words are not hyper-links to the appropriate part of the book and there are no page numbers you could skip to manually. I can't comment on how this book works on an actual Kindle device, I don't have one. On the other hand, the paper version of this book could be used as a building-block, it is so large. I've used the paper version of this book for a couple of years and found it very helpful.
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