Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Sicily (Sicily, 1st ed)

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

 

 

I recently bought this guide for a 2 week trip to Sicily this May. I bought 3 guides - Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Blue Guide. This was by far the worst guide I have ever purchased to go anywhere. For example, two of the premier sites to see in Sicily are the cathedral at Monreale - it gets 3 short paragraphs - and the Capella Palatina gets only 2. The getting around advice was generally good, but at 300 pages (including the index at the back), the descrptions of tourist sites and towns left a lot to be desired. I actually wondered if the author had ever been there. The Rough Guide was much better detailed and I like their honest assessment of whether something is worth seeing. The Blue Guide is of course the best touring guide, this one was even pretty good at giving advice on getting around. We did not rent a car and relied on public transportation. I think I could probably have done the entire trip with this one guide. I do not use a guide for hotels or restaurants. I use the internet to find apartments and we just walk around to find restaurants so I can't give any advice for any of the guides for those items.

We spent 2 weeks in Sicily in Oct 2007. We used the Lonely Planet Sicily (3rd Edition) and the Blue Guide Sicily (7th Edition). Lonely Planet covers the all the major sites, cities, and towns. Its city maps, with the locations of restaurant, hotels, etc. are extremely helpful. However, it is missing some of the smaller towns and sites, and offers sparse coverage of the east coast of Sicily. Fortunately, the Blue Guide is far, far superior in terms of its comprehensive detail, and quality of information. Indeed the Blue Guide is one of the best guide books I have ever seen on any region: its intelligence and depth are extraordinary. On the other hand, the Blue Guide city maps, while graphically excellent, are lacking the markers for restaurant and hotels that Lonely Planet has. And there were days when we did not feel like lugging the Blue Guide's 512 pages around. So ultimately, we were glad to have both.

I purchased the latest edition of this guide hoping that the problems with the previous edition would have been addressed. To be fair, I have not gone on my trip yet, but I have been very disappointed and frustrated with the book as I use it plan my trip.

I am a huge fan of Lonely Planet, but this book isn't even formatted like an LP guide -- it has more of a A Rough Guide format which I don't care for. Worst of all, I have stumbled on enough inaccurate information that I now feel the need to double-check everything. I would give this LP Guide a pass.

Just got back from a trip to eastern Sicily in September, 2010. This guidebook repeatedly got us lost, as the maps (especially of Catania) are extremely inaccurate. Plus, most of the restaurants listed in the Catania and Aeolian Islands sections either shut down years ago, or quite simply never existed (some of the streets that restaurants and hotels were supposed to be on, do not exist!).

The book offers no help in setting up trips to Mt. Etna (one of the biggest tourist attractions in Sicily!), or the ferries to and from Messina and Milazzo to the Aeolian Islands, and most of the costs that are listed in the book aren't even close to reality.

My girlfriend and I wondered if the author had even visited eastern Sicily! Though she does talk about placing some of the radioactive mud that is found at the mudbaths at Vulcano on our her face...hmmm!

The new 2011 version of LP's Sicily is a total redo by a new author. Unfortunately, while the content seemed fairly accurate, there is much less important detail compared with the previous version. I just came back from 2 weeks touring through Sicily, and clearly, I had to rely on a host of other tour books. In particular, the 2011 version eliminated most of the hotel listings and many maps. I'm still a fan of Lonely Planet, though I frequently needed to use The Rough Guide as well as the 2008 LP version (which had problems with either accuracy or out of datedness).

Sicily was fun to see. I'd highly recommend it, especially the Aeolian Islands. Base yourself on Lipari and take day trips to the other islands. They're all special, but you'll need to budget at least 4-5 days so you can spend at least a day on each. May was a fantastic time to go. Mild weather and no crowding.

If you are looking for a Sicily guide that has wrong information, no useful photographs, terrible maps and uses terms like "boho-chic", then this is your book.

For example, the guide says Monreale Cathedral is open from 8-6 continuously, but when I got there at 12:30, it was the start of a 3-hour siesta so I was stuck wandering around in the January cold with a town that doesn't have anything else going on. This is a problem when one has only a couple of days in Palermo.

It's better to have no book, and use internet sources, than this book. Avoid.

It's hard to write a guidebook for Sicily -- sure, it's only an island, but there's so much history and culture packed into this island that it is a daunting task for any author to fit it all into one easy to carry guide. I'm not a big fan for wide reaching trips where you see a thousand things in a week or two, and sometimes I find these books just too vague for me. I tend to prefer specific guides for specific places. That being said, this is as good a guide to Sicily as you will find. The Blue Guide is decent and a bit stronger in terms of the hisory/culture of Sicily, but this guide gives you the best of both worlds. This new edition has a new author, and it is slightly improved (there's an extra 20 or so pages) from the fourth edition. The maps are better, more color photos and a good overview of the island and its culture as well as an overview of movies/books/museums/artworks, etc. that will give you a good, general background on the island.

You won't learn everything you need from a guide -- a guide will only get you so far. Eventually, you'll have to put the guide down and head to the island and experience for yourself the magic that is Sicily! :)

She is way to worried about what might happen in the city of Polarimo. What a city full of wonderful and helpful people. If I had taken her advice to heart I would have stayed in my hotel room with the door locked at night lying on the floor. Go to Sicily Rick Steves and write the perfect travel book. This one is not it!

Good overview of the area. Lots of good history, culture and beach suggestions. Nicely written.

This regional guide provides first-rate information for both the current scene and for the complicated history of this island. My family found it quite helpful on a recent visit.