On 1 May 2007 06:29:13 -0700, Iceman wrote:
>Rough Guides is the best all-Europe guide. They have good maps, good
>information on history and culture, feature sights off the beaten
>track, and are very good on the little details that while not flashy
>are very important, like exactly which trains you can get out of a
>city.
Except that I've often found them to be wildly inaccurate. I took a
long detour once in Spain just so that I could travel along a road
that was described in Rough Guide as scenic, winding along a river
(the Tajo, I think). It instead wound past housing developments, junk
yards and billboards; I got two glimpses of water, which might have
been swimming pools for all I could tell. The road looked close to the
river on a map, and I'm pretty sure the author wrote that section
sitting at a desk looking at a map.
They also pointed me to a "hostal" in Madrid that was up five flights
of stairs; The last flight was of wood and so rotten that they worried
my engineer husband. Once again, I'm sure the author had never been
there. He probably made a few phone calls. I've never been steered so
badly by Let's Go.
>Let's Go is a good guidebook if you intend to stay in roach-infested
>dormitories and eat cafeteria food and McDonald's, and drink beer with
>other Americans instead of actually seeing or experiencing anything.
>If your budget is more than $10 a day, get a real guidebook and don't
>use Let's Go.
I've found excellent lodging bargains using Let's Go, and while some
were places I'm not likely to seek out in the future, their
descriptions were always accurate enough so that I knew what I was
getting into. They warned me, for instance, on an earlier trip, about
the stairs in a hostal in Segovia that was only on the second floor
(third floor American). Let's Go covers lodgings from youth hostels
to 1 or 2 star hotels, and has up-to-date price information instead
of the broad and inaccurate $$ categories used by Rough Guide and
Lonely Planet. (These guides don't publish new editions often enough
to have recent pricing information.)
>Lonely Planets are really hit and miss. They put out literally
>hundreds of different books, and employ a huge number of writers so
>the quality really varies. Part of the problem is that their least
>experienced writers get countries like France and Italy while the
>experienced ones are busy working on books for Zambia and Bangladesh.
>Regardless of how good the individual writers are, Lonely Planet's
>maps almost always suck, and they are very poor at things like train
>connections. Also, they try too hard to be comprehensive and include
>everything, and as a result give only superficial coverage to the
>places 95% of people actually go to.
Lonely Planet's Ireland guide had an egregious error when I used it.
The location they gave for the Galway international airport was
actually the location of a tiny airstrip that had nothing but charter
flights to the Aran Islands. Luckily I was only returning a rental
car, not catching a flight. The actual airport was on the opposite
side of Galway.
I've found Lonely Planet more useful in Asia than in Europe.
Let's Go is also pretty good at train and bus connections. Their
all-Europe guide has a map (or at least the 2001 edition had) with
approximate prices printed on tracts between major cities. It could
give a fairly accurate rough comparison of the cost of 2nd-class
tickets vs. a rail pass.
>Rick Steves is written for 55-year olds who have never left the US
>before. There's nothing in there you wouldn't get from a tour
>brochure.
Rick Steves is good for giving people the courage to strike out on
their own. He tends to over hype some places and has a very scanty
list of lodgings. So there's one guide we more or less agree on.
Most guides are revised about every five years. Look for a guide that
has the year printed in large typeface on the cover if you want
lodging or restaurant information. If you just want coverage of the
sights, this isn't as important. However, even then an up-to-date
guide is often worth while. The Rough Guide for Spain didn't warn me
that the villa and gardens at La Granja, near Segovia, was closed for
renovations, although I had the most recent edition and the villa had
been closed for over a year when I was there.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup |