Lonely Planet Finland - European Travel Books

Paperback - April, 2003 - Lonely Planet Publications
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By: Paul Harding
ISBN: 1740590767

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Reviews by readers

Great book!

I visited this country with my Finnish boyfriend in 2002. THe book was a great help. It helped me decide which tourist spots, shopping areas, historical sites and places of interest to check out. The only part that I didn't like was that it didn't touch too much on the smaller cities of Finland, but in general, it's a good buy. Definitely worth it, but make sure you get "Culture Shock, Guide to Finland" if you do travel to Suomi. Having a cultural view of this beautiful country is important.

Lots of maps and pretty facts...

But if you happen to be in Finland, the only thing you'll need to sample is the local alcoholic beverages.

Not as inspiring as the cover would indicate!

To put this review in context - my wife and I travelled to Sweden and Finland this summer. She has family in both countries who we visited and stayed with. Much of the time was spent in rural Finland (Kuusamo and region). Our home is Thunder Bay, which is a small pulp-and-paper city (100 000) in rural Ontario.

The Lonely Planet guides are well-known (at least among my travelling friends) as including a little bit of everything - culture, entertainment, restaurants, and places to stay. Because Finland is a young and sparsely-populated country, it turns out that there aren't a lot of castles or museums or cathedrals to see, and those that are there are not as impressive (generally) as their counterparts in Sweden. No, the reason to go to Finland, according to this guide, is the nature, parks, wildlife, etc.

Normally this kind of thing is very inspiring, and the book makes it sound interesting. However, this is exactly the kind of thing we can do at home - provincial parks, downhill and cross-country skiing, and moose crossing the road are all part of our normal existence. Why would we go to Finland to experience these things? This is the nature of the country, of course, which the editors of the Lonely Planet series cannot control. However, reading the book did not give me any particular desire to go to Finland had I not been planning to go anyways. It seems like the editors may as well have summed it up as "It's a great place to live, although a little dull to visit." In reality, the country is much more interesting than the book would have led me to believe.

Having badmouthed the general aspects, I do want to praise the section on Helsinki. Here the guidebook shines and we toured the city and the sites based on the well-documented walking/biking tour. It is a fantastic way to view the city and made the purchase cost of the book well worthwhile. We saw much more of the city than we would otherwise have been able to. Likewise, as visitors to Scandanavia will likely have noticed, there is a dearth of mid-range eating places (pubs, "family restaurants", etc.) in Scandanavian cities, so we relied on this book to find a place to eat, which again was exactly as described. In that restaurant, we were planning our next move when in walked another couple with the same guidebook, sitting at the table next to us. Obviously they were finding the book useful as well!

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