Lonely Planet Switzerland - European Travel Books

Paperback - July, 2003 - Lonely Planet Publications
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By: Damien Simonis, Sarah Johnstone and Lorne Jackson
ISBN: 174059228X

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Reviews by readers

One Of The Better Guides

I have been to Switzerland many times. Recently I sat down with my daughter who has worked at a hotel at Interlaken in Switzerland during her years in Business Administration at McGill - up to last summer - and we went over the Switzerland guides to see how they ranked, and what was currently the best guide in our humble opinions. We are not experts but have certain requirements and preferences. It helps if one can get a feel for the area in advance of a trip, and generally that is helped by good maps and color photos. So those guides do better in our review. We like to make reservations by internet and telephone and just use the Guide as a "guide".

Generally it costs more to publish a book with color photos so when all else is reasonably equal, one feels that they get better value with a guide with photos. Also we wanted to see if the ambiance at certain hotels and resorts was accurately portrayed in the text based on our knowledge. So those aspects of the guides determine our ranking. Incidentally all the books are excellent. When we did our review the new DK Eyewitness guide was not yet available, but in any case it will be short, under 400 pages.

For the Swiss guides we separated the guides into three groups, 5, 4, and 3 stars.

5 Stars (this group has nice color photos plus maps and text).

A. Green Guide to Switzerland published February 2001 by Michelin, 395 pages, $14., ranked 24,380 on Amazon.com, 0.64" x 9.4" x 4.7", lots of photos, maps, text, accurate portrayal of areas. Gives a nice idea of what you will find. Goes right down to small villages in detail even though it is just 395 pages. First choice.

B. Lonely Planet Switzerland published July 2003, 335 pages, $ 14., ranked 29,913 on Amazon.com, .69" x 6.42" x 6.5". Solid effort, lots of good photos and descriptions.

4 Stars (this group mainly text and maps).

C. Rough Guide to Switzerland published June 2003, 704 pages, $13.27, ranked 30,209 on Amazon.com, 1.08" x 7.8" x 6.38". Solid effort lots of things to see and do and best "text and maps only" books.

D. Frommer's Switzerland published February 2003, 512 pages, $15.39, ranked 47,638 on Amazon.com, 1.1" x 8.5" x 5.08". Similar to Rough Guide but shorter.

E. Fodor's Guide to Switzerland 42 edition, published December 2002, 448 pages, $14.7, ranked highest in group on Amazon.com at 3,172, 1.2" x 8.98" x 5.01". The smallest in the group, do not know why it is so popular?.

3 Stars

F. Michelin Red Guide published in 2004, 563 pages but in four languages: Italian, French, German and English so English sections are just a fraction of the book.

Lonely Planet vs. Michelin Green Guide

General Overview:
In preparation for my 2005 trip to Switzerland I bought two travel guides from amazon: Michelin's Switzerland: The Green Guide and Lonely Planet's Switzerland. I used both guides to aid me in deciding which cities I would visit during my two week vacation.

Since I've used other Lonely Planet guides (Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium and Luxembourg), I found myself relying more on the Lonely Planet Switzerland book than the Green Guide when planning my trip in advance. In fact, it was based on the Lonely Planet's great section on Lausanne that I opted to include that beautiful city as part of my holiday. All of my actual hotel decisions were made using on-line reviews, but both guide books gave me a reasonable feel for how far it would be for me to walk from the train station to my hotel.

I ended up bringing both books (they are small and light weight) on my trip, and found that I did not need either book during the day. In Switzerland most cities have a tourist information office located in the main train station. These offices provide free stadtplans (city maps) that point out major points of interest, and I found these maps were easy to fold into my back pocket and enabled me to "be bold" and head off in places that were only vaguely described in the guide books.

Comparison of the Two Books:
The Green Guide really seems to focus more on tourism where you have access to a car. All of the points of interest are linked to colorful major road maps, but the Green Guide is lacking in providing the foot/train traveler in good directions to and from the train stations. Lonely Planet guides tend to be made with this type of traveler in mind, and though the Lonely Planet does a great job in describing self guided walking tours through major Swiss cities it too would sometimes talk about interesting castles, glaciers, or ice caves without providing specific foot or public transit directions (I ended up just asking the locals for directions ... and the Swiss are very friendly and easy to talk to).

The Lonely Planet is much better if you won't be traveling in a car and if this is your first trip to Europe! However, in describing where I went and actually reading about the people and land itself, the Green Guide is a much more complete book. When I return to Switzerland I'll be carrying the Green Guide and not the Lonely Planet. The maps are really much better in the Green Guide, and the first 75 pages of the book offer a very detailed and comprehensive primer on what makes Switzerland unique and worth traveling to!

If you can afford both books, I would read the Green Guide first and focusing on the first 75 pages. Then I start reading the Lonely Planet and to help narrow down which cities you'll visit. Thought he Lonely Planet has some history information (~60 pages), it also mixes in general travel advice in the introduction to Switzerland section that really waters down the fun of reading about a new place!

[NOTE: This review is slightly different than what I posted for the Green Guide Switzerland.]

Not Useful for Smaller Areas

I liked the reference sections of this book holding useful tips for travel, history, culture common phrases, etc. The few sections I read on the larger cities appeared to have good detail as well. However, I recently traveled to the Valais region (SW of Switzerland) and found really very little in the way of useful information from this book.

As an example, on of the smaller, rural valleys in the region called Val d'Herens had a single paragraph including a sentence that said the valley was not to be missed, but nothing on why or what to see. The valley was filled with charming towns like Evolene and beautiful villages (personally, I recommend the village of Arolla at the head of the valley for beautiful hiking).

I did not visit any major areas besides Zermatt that were well covered by the book, but perhaps if your trip revolves around cities of good size, this is the right book for you. For those seeking an overall country guide, this book does not provide a good enough level of detail.

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