Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Prague

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I studied in Prague for the last four months, and I took this book with me everywhere. It is the only guidebook that has the hours that everything is open and how to get there. All of the information in it is highly reliable. I highly recommend it if you plan on spending more than a few weeks in Prague, although I supplemented it with the Eyewitness Guide to Prague and the Rough Guide to Prague.
However, it offered little advice on which the best places to eat and stay and visit are. It also has very few pictures, which is unfortunate, because out of the thousands of beautiful places to visit in Prague, it is helpful to be able to see which buildings appeal to oneself the most before choosing to visit them.
If you plan to stay in Prague for longer than a week, this is an essential book to buy. However, for quick trips to Prague, I would suggest buying the Rough Guide to Prague (it offers good advice about where to go) and the Eyewitness Guide to Prague (it has tons of pictures). Also, if you plan on spending more than a few days in Prague, buy the Lonely Planet Guide to the Czech and Slovak Republic - there is so much more to the Czech Republic than Prague, and taking a day trip or two outside of the city is time well spent.

The Lonely Planet series are usually great books. This guide is no exception. It is definately suited for the budget traveller, so if you are flush with cash, you might want a guide book that will review the more up-scale establishments. If you are strapped for cash, this book will serve you well.

In the past year I have had the chance to travel to Prague, Paris, and London, and for each trip I brought along a Lonely Planet city guide. These books are simply the best. In previous travels I have tried books by other groups, but Lonely Planet has never steered me wrong. The books are accurate and up-to-date, and offer advice for all modes of travel (economic, social, time constraints, interests, and so on). The history and culture sections are useful but not too long, and the same is true of the descriptions of the various sites and sights. Don't travel without one!

I couldn't find the current edition, so I had to settle for the third edition. However, I found it extremely useful to have on hand from consulting the Metro map to small area maps. They can't replace having a good map of Prague, but they can help you find and identify sights in an area and nearby restaurants. Complete pronunciation would make the small Czech language guide in the back more useful since Czech is not a language you just start speaking. I don't understand why Lonely Planet no longer makes their cities guides in a pocket friendly size. I loved being able to cram the Melbourne guide in my pocket when I wandered around there. It is debatable on just getting the entire Czech and Slovak Republic guide instead of just the Prague guide, since there is a large amount of overlap. If you're just visiting Prague, I would recommend getting this small volume, but for more widespread travel in the Czech Republic, the complete volume is your choice. I took both, and probably could have done without this city guide, but didn't want to take any chances on missing out on anything in Prague, even though Prague has more than enough to offer for several visits. Included are several day trips outside of Prague, such as to Terezin, a nearby concentration camp and site of a clever ruse. Worth half a day visit, though fairly depressing. If you're going to spend more than a few days in Prague, this is essential. For just a weekend you will still get some use out of it, though it might overwhelm you with all the places to visit in Prague.

I love Lonely Planet Guides and have used them for many trips in the past, but this book was certainly not complete. One example is the lack of info on marionette shows. It's one of the most popular things to do in Prague and this book only mentions marionettes once, in a short paragraph about the history of theater in Prague. No mention on the places to see a show or what to see. Also, I have never had a travel guide that didn't mention ANYTHING about the train station in the city!! This book did not even have one piece of info on the train stations or how to find them, how to travel from other cities to Prague or how to get to other places from Prague. We had planned to go to Vienna from Prague and had no idea where the train station was, how to get to it, or how to find a train schedule. Thankfully our hotel was able to fill us in on this info. I would NOT recommend using this book as your tour guide for Prague, it isn't thorough by any means.

Just returned from a 7 day visit to Prague. This book went with us everywhere!! We did 2 of the suggested "walks." Loved that it told you what to see if you had an hour or if you had an afternoon.

Everyone of the restaurants we visited based on LP's recommedation was amazing. (We're thinking of buying the LP guide to NYC so we know where to grab a bite after work).

We also took along the Eye Witness guide when we went to major spots -- Prague Castle, Charles Bridge -- because it had more pictures.

Will buy a LP guide for next overseas travel!!

If you're looking for bars in Prague, this is the guide for you. If you want a thorough review of where to stay, and what there is to see in Prague as far as museums and monuments, try the Discovery Channel guides or Marco Polo.

This was a great guide for Prague. It provided me with maps of places like St Vitus' Cathedral and Prague Castle that were hard to come by even at the ticket office for these places. I have limited experience with other guidebooks, but I have always found the Lonely Planet series to be well-written and particularly useful for finding a range of services delineated by cost. So you can find the cheap stuff as well as the expensive stuff. Historical details are interspersed throughout the books, too, which can make for a more in-depth travel experience. This particular guide was written in a personable style and was full of useful information. It greatly enhanced my trip.

Recently purchased the 9th Edition and found the pullout maps to be useless. The text is printed in an incredibly small font. I purchased this book without seeing it first based on experience with past Lonely Planet books. Never again. Outside of the history of Prague, I found little useful about this city guide. I was better served with a map provided by the hotel and what information I could gather online. I am shifting to Frommer's.

As far as descriptions of sights, restaurants tours, history, etc, the information was pretty accurate. But actually being in Prague and using the book to get around to different sights and restaurants was extremely difficult.

Instead of having a chapter on a specific neighborhood with everything in that neighborhood, they have a chapter on neighborhoods, then shopping, then eating, then drinking, then entertainment, etc. Having to flip to the eating section, then flip back to the neighborhood section, then flip to the map to see where it was located was very time consuming and annoying.

Another thing I didn't like was that the writing on the maps was much too small. I have perfect reading vision and could barely make out the street names and numbers.