Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Scandinavian Europe (Lonely Planet)

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After using several Lonely Planet books, I was thoroughly disappointed with this guide. The guide stuffs Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland with the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Do that many people hit Greenland and the main Scandinavian countries in the same trip to justify putting it in the same book? The result is that the book is short on detail, even the basic "Things to Do" that you can find in a competing Scandinvian guide. The guide is about 1/3 the size of just the Finland book, but about the same price.

Sometimes I wonder if LP is getting complacent because of their brand name and is not doing as good a job validating the information published. I used this guide in my recent travel to 4 countries in the Scandinavia. For every country, at least 50% of the information on cafes/restaurants/hotels were incorrect. Eg. in Helsinki, I went to 4 restaurants listed on the book. Out of 4, only 1 is correct. The other 3 have either closed down, moved or changed owners and is no longer serving what the guide describes. The friend who was travelling with me even asked me to toss the guidebook away, after the time we've wasted getting to all the restaurants/cafes that no longer exists. In my final stop, Norway, I was really hesitant to use the guide further, as it made so many mistakes. I did use it one more time to book the Norway-In-A-Nutshell package as per the book's recommendation and directions. What I found out later, through other travellers, was that it is better to book this at the train station and each leg separately, rather than as a package. By booking each leg separately, you can easily save up to Kr 400 (which is ~ USD 65, Euro 50). The amount of effort and time to do either is the same. I am hugely disappointed by LP's efforts in research and updating the information they publish.

Lets face it this book is for backpackers trying to sqeeze by in an expensive place like Scandinavia. If you want to read about the region than your going to need another book. Outside the major citites this book probably lacks coverage but in the cities it is a completely different story. I did some major hosteling in Scandinavia due to budget constraints. Many of these hostels were the nicest ones I have ever seen. If you want to hostel around Scandinavia this book is the most useful lonely planet I have yet to purchase out a dozen or so.