40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Limited scope, May 29, 2007
This review is from: Lonely Planet Syria & Lebanon (Multi Country Guide) (Paperback)
LP, like all guidebooks, varies in quality depending on the author. While this guide on Syria/Lebanon isn't the worst, it could be much better.
The main problem is that it is extremely limited in its scope. Both Syria and Lebanon, but Syria in particular, have literaly hundreds of sites to see, but you wouldn't know it with this LP. It only gives you the most popular sites and then a few it claims are "off-the-beaten-track" but really aren't. It misses some of Syria's best out of the way castles and ruins. Great stuff that if you only relied on LP, which promotes teh beaten backpacker track, you would never find.
I would give it a 1-star, but it is saved by the hotel recommendations. Syria is a place where knowing what hotels to hit up can be hard, and LP does a good job giving you affordable ones that are tourist-tested.
Still, though, the guide lacks any real historical or cultural insight and really only gives the illusion of leading you down the "road-less traveled."
I lived in Syria for a year and tried to take in as much as possible and thus found myself sifting through numerous guides. The one I found to be the best was Footprints, but they haven't published an updated version since 2001. The new Bradt is quite promising, but if you really want to know what Syria has to offer, you need "Monuments of Syria" by Ross Burns. It doesn't have many glossy pictures, but it does have every single cultural and archaeological site worth seeing in this great country.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"As you wish", December 28, 2000
"As you wish" is the response to most questions in Syria, making the LP Guide very necessary. It contains excellent information on rarer sites and ruins along with very good historical information about them.
The hotel information was very helpful since good lodging in Syria can be hard to find. The information on the souks is very good for those that like to shop. Finally in the same vain, their food section was very helpful for different budgets.
The LP Guide is more detailed than the new Neos Guide published by Michelin, but unfortunately the maps are awkward to read in the LP guide and the detail maps to some of the less well traveled sites are not very reliable and the directions are poor. (I searched for a specifically described site near Aleppo for over an hour.) Overall though, it contains very detailed information, which is definately necessary in Syria since one is unable to find such information locally without considerable effort. I would recommend the Neos Guide for an overview and quality maps, and the LP guide for more detailed information. Both guides are necessary for a meaningful and hassle free trip.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lebanon-4 stars, Syria-2 stars, January 2, 2008
This review is from: Lonely Planet Syria & Lebanon (Multi Country Guide) (Paperback)
I can't say I won't recommend this book but I would suggest looking at other travel guides if possible. The Lebanon aspect of the book was much better than the Syria section. The food section for Beirut is knowledgeable and accurate. I was living in Lebanon at the time so I can't speak for the hotel selections accuracy. The book does do a good job on describing the more cultural aspects of Lebanon and what to visit and what is worth a miss.
I spent a bit of time traveling in Syria and I can not give this guide a positive review. This is a complete guess and biased of me but I would think the couple that wrote the book are Lebanese and didn't properly investigate or travel enough to Syria to see the best it has to offer. As with the Lebanon chapter the food section was good, it gives a pretty good description of the eating varieties. The hotel guide was useful in it gave names and phone numbers of hotels in Syria. As for the reviews, well I didn't find them to be accurate or useful in any sense. Some reviews were close and some were completely off base. I do agree with another reviewer that the book misses some really great cultural aspects of the trip that I would have missed if I didn't have friends living in Syria who recommended them.
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