Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Madrid Encounter

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We just returned from a two-week visit to Madrid. Armed on the trip with larger, more comprehensive guides to the city (Fodor's, Frommer's, and DK), we purchased this guide in Madrid as it gave us the nitty-gritty of the city Madrid in a small yet comprehensive format. Much more practical when on the go. Read the other travel guides before you travel if you must, but the Encounter guide is the essential guide when in the city. For instance, it omits hotels, which is a no-brainer: why would anyone want to carry around a larger volume with pages and pages of hotel recommendations when, presumably, if you are an adult and have specifically taken an airplane to Madrid, it would seem logical that you have already booked a hotel, so why clutter your life with pages and pages of hotel recommendations. In the past, I have thought little of Lonely Planet's smaller Encounter guides, but no more. This guide was the ideal guide for info and ease of portability: I will include Lonely Planet's Encounter guides as part of my reference material in any future city.

Lonely Planet light! This book on Madrid is more like a travel magazine article. It fails to even mention one of the most popular art museums in Madrid. Rather than reviewing hotels they want you to book through them on a Web site where there are no customer reviews. They claim to have personally checked them all out. To me this is a conflict of interest.