Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet New York City (City Guide)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are like most locals, we never have time to explore the city. Too much work, too many commitments. This guide helped me find things nearby I didn't even know existed. I really like the Loney Planet guides in general and this one is no exception.

I recently visited NYC for the first time. I took only three books about that city with me: this guide, the "Top 10 New York" guide, and "The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide". I must say that the "Lonely planet NYC Guide" was not my favourite, though.

Truth to be told, this guide has a lot of useful information, and that proved helpful in some cases. What is more, it has some interesting planned walking tours that I liked, and good sections with data about the city and its history.

On the other hand, this guide doesn't have too many photos in color, and it includes some maps that are not specially good, particularly if you compare them with the spectacular maps of the "Top 10 New York" guide. Furthermore, it is big enough to be heavy, something that you will not appreciate if you have to carry it with you the whole day.

On the whole, I can say that I liked this guide, but I recommend it only as a complement to the "Top 10 New York" guide, or another small guide like that, the kind of guide that you can carry with you while you leave the "Lonely planet NYC Guide" in your hotel room to check at night if needed. Enjoy your trip :)

Belen Alcat

There are travel books that throw a bunch of facts at you and, in the end, that's what you're left with: Useless, "soul-less", undifferentiated information that leaves you no wiser. This guide is different. It's pretty clear that Beth Greenfield cares about "her" city and knows a tremendous amount about it. She's written a guide that I found enlightening despite being no stranger to NYC. I visited old city haunts with a new understanding after reading this guide. For New York ex-pats, this guide will bring back some fond memories ... I highly recommend this book.

It was the first time I was on NYC, I bought this guide couple of weeks before my trip. The Maps where just amazing, really useful, its true that you find a lot of maps overthere anyway, but getting familiar with your guide was really useful for me. The tour that the guide suggest are really accurate. The only thing that I would change is the amount of pages, because of two reasons 1.- is kind of bulky so even when is really easy to carry with your hand, or even when you are walking with back pack, when you have been walking for 10 hours even a sheet of paper will be heavy, 2.- I did not had the time to read it from the begining to the end, it was just too much, before the trip I had to work and during the trip I refused to seat in the park to read the guide having this amazing things to see. Dont get me wrong, this is an amazing guide, and in my next trip I would definetly consider buying lonely planet again.

What makes this a great guide is the fact that the listings for attractions/ shops / etc all have map numbers, which makes them very easy to find on the book's maps. Also, the maps have their own little mini tables of attractions. So, it's easy find where to go (if you are looking for something in particular) or what's around you (if you're already there). Unfortunately, the index is sorely lacking. Suppose you want to go for a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park, and you want to know where to find the carriages. You will not find out through the index. There is no mention of them under "Central Park." There is no listing for "carriages" nor "carriage rides" and the listing for "horse-drawn carriages" is about the ones in Philadelphia. Luckily, there actually is an extensive paragraph telling you all you need to know about this, and it is in the book's description of Central Park (which makes sense). But you wouldn't know by looking at the index. So, if you're planning a trip to N.Y., and you don't see a particular attraction in the index, do some research on the web, find out where it's supposed to be, and then turn to the section on that particular neighborhood in the book. Maybe you'll find it there. Use a highlighter to mark the page.

I've been to NYC several times for short trips, but on my most recent trip I was going for longer and I wanted to get the most out of my experience, so I decided to buy a guidebook. LP is normally my go-to company for guidebooks, and I've had particular luck with their city guides in particular.

I was underwhelmed by this guide though. Maybe it was because I wasn't a complete beginner in the city, or maybe it was that I had done some research online before I left home and I was traveling with an iPhone so I could always look things up on the go, but this book felt really basic to me. It doesn't really suggest many things too far off the beaten path, and I didn't think the walking tours were that good--you could get the same or better experience just by wandering around the different neighborhoods of this great city. The maps were hard to read or not detailed enough. Probably the most useful thing in the book were the listings for sites of interest that included the nearest subway stop, but NYC transit has started printing mini "This is Culture" maps that do the same thing for most of the tourist sites and museums in the city, with a listing of the sites on one side and a subway map on the back. The free guide folds to the size of a credit card, which is much easier to deal with on the crowded streets of New York than this fairly bulky book.

If you're totally new to New York or nervous about being in such a big city without a detailed guidebook, go for this guide. It has all of the things you would expect from Lonely Planet. If you're willing to take a few chances, just do some research on the internet before you leave home and save your money to spend in NYC.

I had to buy this book at the last minute, due to the fact that I wasn't contented with the format and information that New York (Eyewitness Travel Guides) had, which I borrowed from a friend. And I was fairly contented with the amount of information that LP has for this book. It has a detailed coverage of Manhattan and its neighborhoods, and it covers areas outside Manhattan more extensively than the other book.

The one complaint I have about this edition is that they do not double-check the maps. The map at p. 282 especially is at fault. For example, the Majestic Theater is at w 44th St. but the map lists it as somewhere in 41st St. Perhaps somebody forgot to proofread the maps this time.

I've always used Lonely Planet travel guides in my travels. There's way more to NYC than a guidebook could ever cover but Lonely Planet did a great job as it always does. It's always good to know that I can trust LP to provide the basic information regarding how to get to/from the airport, transportation around the city as well as other information regarding sights and restaurants.

I actually returned this book. It had next to no pictures and was very poorly organized. The categories were neither by theme nor geography, so it was really hard to find anything or make much sense of the book. Most of the text was just the writers' cheesy editorializing that fell very short of their attempt to be witty and insightful. When I buy a travel book, I want to be informed and guided, and this book did neither of those things.

Restaurant recommendations were great and I loved the itineraries! A must for novice and amateur travelers to NYC...it is well supplemented by the NFT Guide to New York