Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet London (City Guide)

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

 

 

I am a long-time Lonely Planet fan. I even bought one about where I live for those moments I'm feeling touristy in my hometown. The London City Guide wasn't very useful at all. I have an upcoming trip to San Francisico planned, and I'm seriously considering trying a different publisher after this experience.

The guide has the Lonely Planet standards - maps, walking tours, tons of history about the city. But the index is terrible! If you're like me and you use the index to look up information quickly while you're walking by a landmark, this book won't help you much. Want to learn about Buckingham Palace? While Kensington and Windsor are listed in the index, Buckingham is not. You have to find a special section called "Palaces" in the back pages, and the page number for Buckingham is listed there. This is just one example of SEVERAL instances where I was unsatisfied with this purchase.

As another reviewer mentioned, there is no information on the Underground "Tube" system. They give you a map, but that's it. And the people working in the stations are of little help when trying to decide which pass is best for your needs. One of my travel companions had the Rick Steves London book, which provided detailed Underground info that helped us choose our Oyster card.

Also, the admission prices they list are WAY off. Of course, you can't really fault them for that. As soon as you print a book, it's immediately out of date. But my advice is to wait (if you can) for the next publication of this book, or look up the admission prices online before you go if you're trying to budget out your trip in advance.

Here are a few tips that I learned while visiting London that this book didn't teach me -

1) Always try to buy your attactions tickets ahead of time to avoid wasting time in line. We bought our tickets every morning at our hotel's front desk.

2) Try to stay in the Paddington Station area. Among others, Paddington has the Circle and District Underground lines which take you to pretty much any attraction. You can also take trains from Heathrow to Paddington, and can even catch a train out of the city, if that is on your itinerary.

3) Those red double decker "hop on and off" tour buses are overpriced at 25 GBP. At my time of travel, the US conversion made it over $40! While they help you get a lay of the land, it would have been a great cost savings just to use our Oyster cards to get to the attractions we wanted to see.

4) When converting your currency to GBP, it is better to withdraw the funds from an ATM rather than using those currency exchange places in the airport and train stations. In my experience, my bank gave me a much better exchange rate and didn't even charge me for the transaction!

I went to London for about 5 days. A lot of this book was out of date, such as ticket prices for admission to tourist attractions and opening times). Since this edition was published in January 2006, I would recommend a more recent guidebook.

The restaurant recommendations were more upscale than I was hoping for. A place described as Italian with mains costing 7-p pounds actually turned out to be a Mediterranean tapas place and ending up costing 40 pounds per person. I would agree with a previous review that the accomodations were a bit pricier than I was looking for and had better luck finding a place online. I gave it two stars because I did find a nice, traditional pub to hang out in that I went back to multiple nights.

Cross referencing attractions would have been nice - if you looked for a certain subject in the index, it could be spread across 3 different pages (ie. pg 11, 213, 77). I spent a lot of time during my trip with my nose in this book, and I had even flipped through it beforehand! (it took me 2 hours to decide on the inexpensive "Italian" restaurant).

The Walking Tours were ok, but I got the feeling I was missing a lot of things as I followed the maps in the book. I also got lost a lot, which may or may not could be attributed to the book (my travel companions are still laughing about it).

I was so unhappy with this book, I purposefully left it in my rented flat in London. Choose another guidebook.

I have traveled the world with those blue books, and this is the worst. I have never read a travel book that reads more like a where not to go; they might as well have given Hard Rock Cafe London top billing. It read like it was written by a local with distain for tourists and a deep rooted passion to keep them out of the "locals only" places. For instance, the best neighborhood for shopping was ignored, the best clubs for music weren't listed and most restaurants were completely miss represented. Every time I asked a local where they went, even the well-know-among-Londoners places, were either not listed, or so poorly listed, I was shocked when I arrived. I can't say this swears me off my love of the LP series, since I could still read them like novels, but this is on the bottom of the heap.

I too have been a loyal user of LP guides. Bringing it on my recent trip was a waste. Besides the general lack of information, it's poorly organized. For example, things mentioned in the text are often missing from the index. The neighborhoods are clumped together, and the suggested walks don't even include many of the highlights just mentioned in the text. I bought it largely for tips on offbeat places and veggie food, but could have left it home. I hate to say it, but get yourself a different guide for this city.

There are many guides to London. From what I can see there are two good general guidebooks. These are the Eyewitness Travel (DK) guide which is the one that I personally prefer or Lonely Planet (the present book). These two books are both just around 500 pages and both are tremendous efforts. They are well balanced guides with lots of photos, maps, history, etc. Both are clearly 5 star guides.

I would rate both (and DK Eyewitness Travel and Lonely Planet) head and shoulders ahead of Frommers or similar books that are less well balanced, i.e.; fewer photos. Overall, the DK guide has better photos and visuals. In fact I am amazed every time I pick up and read that DK guide with the quality of the photos and technical detail. Those graphics make for a better souvenir so it gets the nod as the better book, but it is a close call.

The city has lots of fun things to see and do but time is usually limited and it is expensive - so these guides are good investments. This book is well balanced and like the DK guide it pulls a lot of things together such as history and culture, food, towns and lots of interesting information on London. The book brings it all to life with just magnificent photos and maps, including subway maps.

I have one suggestion, and that is to buy the guide before planning your trip. The guide has lots of information and tips on places to see.

Either case this is an excellent buy. 5 stars.

. The information about the history of London was Ok.

. Ok with the walking tour

. All the highlights and backdoor are inside this guide

BUT...looking with a backpacker eyes..

. They should reduce the big restaurant list and make a better explanation of the highlights is the sight section.

Just for your information, I love Lonely Planet...this is a constructive recommendation that I give to all the city guides...

Another important thing, specially for what they call "A city guide"...they should give more information (map and path) of the buses. Yes...it is not Paris...in London it is easy to find a map for the buses...free of charge...BUT ...I am paying more that US$15 for a city guide, man...they should include.

So, I think, less restaurant and better transport and sight information.

I agree with many other reviews: the index is confusing. And most importantly LP's user friendly color maps in the back of the book (2010 printing)are gone. They have been replaced by a fold out paper map that, inexplicably, does not label the neighborhoods (wanna know where Bayswater is? Too bad) and less detailed maps in the neighborhood chapters. I don't need a flimsy paper map- esp when I already have a laminated one- I need the detailed neighborhood maps. It's one of the reasons I buy LP quides.(I will tear the maps out of my 2002 LP London).

The layout in the form of monochrome tabs always bugs me. Is it too much to make a red tab for hotels, a blue for restaurants, etc, so I can find what I need faster?

Content is fine; I won't know how updated the info is until I get there.

The London history was helpful, as were the site descriptions. The maps do not have labels for each worthwhile site, only a number tied to an index on another page. I wrote the labels into the map to make it easy to identify the spots I wanted to see when I was in the area. I didn't use the walking tours b/c my preferred sites create their own tour.

I normally have no complaints about Lonely Planet books - I've used them repeatedly. The London book is good with great maps, descriptions, directions, and updated admission costs and times, however, I found two things below my expectations: While the maps are good, this edition did not list supermarkets as most other Lonely Planet books do. (When touring on foot as I normally do, I like stopping in to a supermarket for a quick snack or drink - usually quicker and less expensive than going to a restaurant.) The other feature I found confusing is listing sights outside of London proper with no directions on how to get there. If I wanted sights outside of London, I'd had bought the Britain edition! If excursions outside the city are listed, it would help to see how to get there and an indication of how long it would take to get there, so one can plan an itinerary.

Excellent guide that helped me through London. The walks listed were particularly helpful in enabling me to make the most of my stay. I'd recommend a combination of this and a pocket sized guide by Time Out.