Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Greece (Country Guide)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Greece was my first time travelling alone and this book was recommended by my friend from Greece. I brought other books but I never needed them. This book is laid out in an easy to read style and one can find information very quickly. When I was in Greece, everybody who did not have a Lonely Planet book was asking to borrow mine. Another nice thing about the book is the size, it seems as if the authors designed it to be carried around. It is not heavy, even at 700+ pages. I carried it everywhere. The accomodation recomendations were accurate and excellent choices. The locations of some of them could not have been better.

The Lonely Planet came with me for a 6-week stay in the Corinthia. Overall I found prices to be very outdated. When I turned to the book looking for specific information, most of the time I discovered it was either scant or missing.

In Athens, I stayed in a couple of budget accomodations in Plaka that received glowing reviews from the guide -- both places didn't even come close to the authors' high praise. In Delphi, the phone number provided for the hotel where I wanted to stay actually rang at a completely unrelated pension several blocks away. A description of which bus to take into Athens from Bus Terminal A and B would have been incredibly useful, and saved me an afternoon of wandering.

I also referred to this book many times for information about the towns and sites around Ancient Corinth, only to find it totally useless. Clearly the authors' own distate about places accounts for this gap. For example: "Loutraki: The town was devastated by the 1981 earthquake, and subsequent reconstruction has resulted in its reincarnation as a tacky resort with dozens of modern, characterless hotels along the seafront. Loutraki hardly warrants an overnight stay." That's it.

Color-photo sections are a nice selling feature of the book, but don't help much when you're trying to find your way around Greece. When I referred to this book I often ended up more lost than found. Browsing through some of the comparable guides, such as the Rough Guide or Let's Go, I unfortunately found them to have very similar shortcomings. Lonely Planet forced me to approach more Greeks and ask directions, and to learn how to find my way around on my own -- perhaps something I can thank them for after all. Next time I go to Greece, I'll leave the guidebook at home.

This review compares the Lonely Plantet Greece (4th Edition) with the Rough Guide Greece (8th edition). We spent 2.5 weeks in July, 2001 in Greece, our first visit, and these were our guide books.

A relucant 4 stars to each, and a slight preference for RG. We certainly found the books serviceable, and they gave us good ideas of where in Greece we wanted to go. But they were much less valuable in their listings for individual destinations. They were the least valuable compared to the other LP and RG travel books we've used (Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Tokyo).

As usual, they both overstate their hotel rankings which to me make sense only if you've been sleeping out on the beach from necessity, and now have finally scraped some money together for a room. An exagerration, but I've lost patience with gushing praise for facilities which are usually no better than serviceable and sometimes less than that. And, we're not into spending money on fancy accommodations. Occassionaly the books are on the money, but often not.

On the smaller islands RG usually had more accommodation listings, but occassionally LP did. There were at least two instances when LP had none, just saying that rooms were available.

The ferry schedules in the books, pretty much consistent between them, bore little relation to reality, even though we were there in the high season.

I want to complete with my usual gripe about these and other guide books: we don't know which restaurants and hotels were actually visited by the writers (and by which one) and when. To paraphrase from my review of RG Portugal:

LP is out front in saying that its reviewers do not stay at all the hotels or eat at all the restaurants they list. I would like it if the reviews would be initialized by the reviewers with the date. This would allow us to learn each reviewer's tastes and standards, not to mention seeing which places they actually visited.

One LP writer (not I think an author of this book) in discussing restaurants wrote: "As one of those LP writers I can tell you that it is not physically possible to eat even a 'little bit of a meal' in each of those restaurants :-) What we all tend to do is eat at a broad cross-section within the norms of natural eating times and visit the other restaurants and talk to the owner or even the diners if it can be done discretely. In the same vein we don't sleep at every hotel!"

Talk to the owners for your evaluation! Says it all.

On a 10-day rental car trip around the mainland in a rental car this guide was very useful because of all the city maps, much more so than the D-K guide, the Frommer's, or even a Michelin Neos guide. The restaurant recommendations were good as well. As for hotels... well, the Lonely Planet authors don't seem to have American standards when it comes to comfort. For smaller towns generally the Lonely Planet was the only book that had any information at all.

2 weeks in Greece last summer (2004) and Lonely Planet was in my bag every day. I always reach for LP first when traveling because they are truthful and not endorsed by anyone. There are many other guides out there (Timeout, for example) that actually have advertisements in their books! How's that for impartial!

Yes, there are a few problems. An internet cafe that was supposed to be on Mykonos is now a flower shop, but that had happened in the past 3 months. We had bought the March 2004 edition, the most current, but it is understandable that perhaps the internet café became a flower shop after they went to print.

Before you buy this book, think about whether you will be spending more time on the islands or the mainland. We were in both places so we decided on just normal "Greece" but I know there is also a "Greek Islands" book which may be better if you are island hopping.

The maps of the cities are helpful and their recommendations whether it be for hotel, food or activities are always great. If you are lucky enough to be going to Greece make sure you pack this book, you'll be very happy with it.

I will not pretend to offer a 'fair and balanced' review as others might, but I will still say that buying the kindle edition of the Lonely Planet Greece Edition was literally like throwing Money out the window. If there was anyway to get a refund or sell this type of edition to someone else, I would be glad to, but sadly I don't think it's possible.

Basically, I do not like ANYTHING about the kindle edition of travel books, from the maps which are ridiculously small and unpractical to the navigation possibilities within the actual book which are basically non-existent. It takes forever to find a section on any given location and if you close the kindle and open it up again, you can't even be sure which city you're reading about. There's no such thing that nears easy navigation from page to page and unless you plan on reading the entire book from start to finish without skipping any pages, this book is completely useless. I just wish there was a 0 star option as this is how I feel about this book and about the kindle when any type of navigation is involved.

One of the main reasons I bought the kindle was that I thought I could save loads of room and weight during my travels to Europe, but I was sadly mistaken. On top of the numerous extra travel books I had to purchase, I also have to add the extra weight (and cost) of the kindle.

i used to only use Lonely Planet for my travels and loved it. this guide was very dissappointing. the athens info was ok, but with the islands we ended up going to it had very little info on them. even on santorini we saw tons of stuff there that was not in the book, and there were no tips on how to get resonably priced villas, which we did on our own anyways. the places we ended up staying were not in the book. the only thing we ended up using it for was fact-checking.
i would recommend 770 greek islands, the other book we had with much more info on everything.

This book offers engaging information and useful tidbits. It's more upscale than "Let's Go," but at 800 pages, offers more complete listings. It includes sets of attractive colored pictures. The maps are in black and white but very detailed. This guide provides practical information designed to get you around Greece. It includes information on ferry time tables and offers a range of places to stay and dine.

I spend a month every summer in Greece, and this guide is excellent! It is concise, reads very easily, and gives good common-sense recommendations on what to see and where to stay. It is as up-to-date as you can reasonably expect with changing prices and euro/dollar fluctuations. A very, very practical guide from the budget tourist to middle class. Excellent pictures, very good maps, a fine job! It reminds me, in a way, of the Michelin guides to Europe.

Reviewed by David Lundberg, author of Olympic Wandering: Time Travel Through Greece

I am very disappointed with this guide. It had virtually no useful information about places I visited and its recommendations on hotels and restaurants were often off the mark. The contact information for hotels was outdated in many cases.
Typically I am very satisfied with Lonely Planet guides, however this one is not up to their usual standard.
I would recommend Independent Travelers Greek Island Hopping instead if you plan to spend any time on Greek islands.