Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet San Francisco Encounter

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

 

 

The Lonely Planet Encounter guide to San Francisco follows the snappy, concise format of the other books in the series--a highlight chapter, followed by sections (by neighborhood) on where to Shop, Eat, See, and Play, and a conclusion with page-long snapshot essays and details on transportation, history, and practicalities. The opening chapter is a list of 11 top excursions in the city, with parenthetical references to the page number where specific restaurants and sights are discussed. Even the back cover is a useful to six exciting adventures--vintage shopping, club-hopping in SoMa, writing Beat poetry, visiting the Mission, strolling bayside, and visiting foggy Alcatraz.

As a Southern California resident, I visit San Francisco annually. I've used dozens of different guidebooks, and I thought I had a good handle on the city, but author Alison Bing has written about a treasure trove of smaller museums, shops, and entertainment options. This guide is especially useful for the traveler who has the lay of the land and wants to uncover more gems in the city. The closing chapter also has some great suggested reading titles for anyone looking to explore San Francisco a little deeper.

This book is a nice complement to another guide. It's compact, short reviews and limited ONLY to SF (nothing beyond the bridges). Its reviews are short and sometimes not really self-explanatory. Overall, I'm not sure if I would buy this book but I might not have been the target of it (plain tourist with no or too old knowledge of the city).

This book fits in a jacket pocket or a purse. Spot-on restaurant recommendations, useful maps, good itinerary ideas. Much more useful than my brother's Frommers. Very helpful overall. Every restaurant I ate at out of here was a palate pleaser. Only wish the maps could show where the hills are, have the BART routes, etc.

I am loving the Encounter series of books by Lonely Planet - they are perfect for the experienced traveler who doesn't need a lot of hand-holding to get around and just wants some orientation to strike it on his or her own. Plus, they are incredibly compact and in full color. Even if I had been to SF twice before using this guide for a third time visiting the city, I found quite a number of interesting new places using it - like a full onsen (sort of like a Japanese spa) in Japantown, an excellent veggie restaurant in Chinatown and some offbeat stores on the Mission that I would have otherwise missed. Granted, this book doesn't go much beyond Golden Gate or Alcatraz, but it doesn't intend to either - its focus is on everything that makes San Francisco the city that it is, and it excels on that respect.

Lonely Planet usually gives you decent recommendations for sights, shops and restaurants outside the usual Fodors/Frommer variety and this is no different. I don't know if it's the recession or that this has been in print in 2007, but several of the shops listed have been closed. It's organized by neighborhood with numbered maps corresponding to the places reviewed. Coupled with a larger laminated map of town, I toured the city quite easily by bus, foot and cable car with this guide.

I keep coming back to Lonely Planet Guides as there is nothing else on the market nearly as good in all respects of travel.
The alternatives (mostly American) do not fire the traveller's enthusiasm as does Lonely Planet; their up-to-date publications matched with internet downloads (listed in the books) are a complete dossier for a trip.