Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Western Europe (Multi Country Travel Guide)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been to Europe >50 times, nearly all countries. Here are my reviews of the best guides to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.

Frommer's
These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.

Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the public transportation system. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

Just got back from visiting 8 countries in three weeks and this book came to my rescue many times. I'd recommend making photocopies or pulling out the pages for your trip so you do not have to lug the whole book around. This was a great way to get an idea of what to plan to see (the cities in two days boxes are really helpful to make a plan and the food recommendations are great (the prices are super helpful). I will definitely buy an updated version of this book if I ever do a similar trip!

Complete, detailed information about most places the typical eurail traveller will go. I'm in the middle of a four week trip through Europe and have found it to be valuable. You don't need a book to help you find a party.

We have now completed three trips of Europe and Great Britain - all of which were fantastic, mainly because of the knowledge this book brings you. The ability to be able to be able to budget properly, know the good and bad parts of town and the true highlights of a location makes it worth every cent. Nothing really goes out of date either so even after a couple of years, it is still a very useful book to have and one that I would highly recommend taking with you (instead of those three shirts that you'll never wear!). Obviously you have to chose what suits your tastes and budgets but this book gives you the best arrangement of options available in any one location. We haven't been disappointed yet.

Arm with this book and maps you got from the tourist infomration is pretty much what you would need on a trip. In fact, there are times that you would only need this book to get around the city to find a specific sight or even a restaurant in the heart of a city. Me and my buddies were using this book on our 7 weeks tour and had no problem at all. The description of the accomodations is very close to reality. The language section helps a lot to get around the city. The only drawback is that the transportation information is not detail enough for you to find the place you want, that's why you should always use this book with the maps you got from the tourist information.

We're getting ready to go on a trip through Europe and picked up this book to help in our planning. Its 2" thick so it's a pretty big book but also covers all the main cities. One-page maps are provided which is nice to have before arriving in a new place. It has attractions, museums, walks, places to stay that range from the hostels to pensions and smaller hotels. Having traveled through Europe as a teen using the Let's Go series, I figured this is the next step - good adventures off the beat path but nt roughing it quite as much as I did 25 years ago. Excellent resource!

Having used many other of Lonely Planet's guides for other countries and regions, I was incredibly let down with this guide and the Spain guide, as well. These two guides had very lofty descriptions and often took a bit of prying to reach the meat of what I should get out of it in each city. Other Lonely Planet guides are very direct in telling one exactly what to see in each place (I have previously used Turkey, Egypt, Guatemala, Southeast Asia, China and others). These two guides would be best written for someone who is spending extensive amounts of time in each place (> 2 weeks). For someone like me, trying to see several places in one trip, it would be more beneficial to me to see highlights in each city and read extensive descriptions about the 5-6 greatest things to see there. For instance, in Cairo, the Egypt guide had a descriptive room-to-room description and map of the Museum there (with mummies and relics) and about what highlights to see in each room. This was not apparent in this book. However, it did manage to give many good recommendations (though prices tend to be underestimated) despite the highlights setback.

Lived in Berlin for 2 years. Travelled all around Europe and before any of my trips the first thing I packed, even before my underwear, was my Lonely Planet western Europe. It was such a great help. I got to see sooooooooooo much.

My friend and I are planning a europe trip, first time for both of this, and this book was a ton of help.

Buying this thru Amazon is great value! To purchase in New Zealand would be more than double the cost.