Lonely Planet Western Europe - European Travel Books

Paperback - February, 2005 - Lonely Planet Publications
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By: Loretta Chilcoat, Reuben Acciano and Fiona Adams
ISBN: 1740599276

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About this book

Lonely Planet guides pride themselves on going places few other guidebooks ever venture--you'll find Lonely Planet guides to Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, and Cambodia, to name only a few of their more far-flung destinations. But even when this series is covering a more popular destination such as Western Europe, the spirit of discovery that imbues more obscure titles is still present. In Lonely Planet Western Europe on a Shoestring the authors and researchers have done their best to make budget travel both fun and fulfilling. There's plenty of back story on every destination, practical information about embassies, newspapers, bookshops, and medical and emergency services plus comprehensive coverage of sights and entertainments. Though the book is primarily geared toward budget travelers, the authors do include the occasional splurge. Best of all, the book contains 200 detailed maps and brief language guides in the back to French, Dutch, German, Italian, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese. Whether you're planning a whirlwind tour of 12 European countries in three weeks or intending to stay awhile, Lonely Planet Western Europe will get you started out on the right foot.

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Reviews by readers

great guide

For the price it's worth it. I only miss some full color maps.

LP is a guide, not an itinerary

I have taken several extensive (3+months) trips to Europe and, having used most of the major European travel guides in the past, I have always been impressed with the relative superiority of LP. I think what most unhappy reviews of these travel guides miss is that these books are all tailored to a very specific market, i.e. "Let's Go" is not for anyone over the age of 30 who wants a serious, non-party oriented European trip; Rick Steves' targets middle-aged and older travelers who need hand-holding because they have little or no experience planning and executing trips abroad; Fodor's is for older adults for whom money is not a real concern; and Lonely Planet is for budget-conscious backpackers of most ages who are looking to spend the least money possible and don't mind roughing it a bit to see the sights. Therefore, you are not going to find the best restaraunts/ hotels in LP, you are going to find the cheapest reasonable local resources that often have an unusual or quirky twist.

From my experience, the LP directions on traveling to/from places, finding train stations, airports, etc. are the most useful thing about the book and well worth the price. However, they don't publish train timetables and don't pretend to give that kind of info because it often changes. You can look that up online. That said, there are some flaws in the books as far as clarity in descriptions for a few point-to-point connections, which can be bit confusing. The book can only cover so much, though. All in all, I've had few hitches in using these guides and highly recommend them to other travelers.

Not Worth It

This guidebook covers the countries of western Europe. However, it seems that Lonely Planet tried to cover too much in this guidebook, so most of the descriptions of sights are barely more than a few sentences and a phone number. It's better to think of this as a giant checklist of places you could visit while in Europe, but don't rely on this for any amount of information. If you're looking for travel and sightseeing information, it's better to get the individual country books for the countries that you are going to travel to. To tell the truth, I bought this because I'm planning a multi-country trip in Europe, so I was hoping that this would contain exstensive information about getting between countries by train, but I was really disappointed to find that the information on this was severely lacking. If you your looking for something like that, Thomas Cook's Europe by rail books are better. Save your money and buy something else.

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