Lonely Planet London (City Guide)

 (24 customer reviews)

I am a long-time Lonely Planet fan. I even bought one about where I live for those moments I'm feeling touristy in my hometown. The London City Guide wasn't very useful at all. I have an upcoming trip to San Francisico planned, and I'm seriously considering trying a different publisher after this experience.

The guide has the Lonely Planet standards - maps, walking tours, tons of history about the city. But the index is terrible! If you're like me and you use the index to look up information quickly while you're walking by a landmark, this book won't help you much. Want to learn about Buckingham Palace? While Kensington and Windsor are listed in the index, Buckingham is not. You have to find a special section called "Palaces" in the back pages, and the page number for Buckingham is listed there. This is just one example of SEVERAL instances where I was unsatisfied with this purchase.

As another reviewer mentioned, there is no information on the Underground "Tube"...Read more

I went to London for about 5 days. A lot of this book was out of date, such as ticket prices for admission to tourist attractions and opening times). Since this edition was published in January 2006, I would recommend a more recent guidebook.

The restaurant recommendations were more upscale than I was hoping for. A place described as Italian with mains costing 7-p pounds actually turned out to be a Mediterranean tapas place and ending up costing 40 pounds per person. I would agree with a previous review that the accomodations were a bit pricier than I was looking for and had better luck finding a place online. I gave it two stars because I did find a nice, traditional pub to hang out in that I went back to multiple nights.

Cross referencing attractions would have been nice - if you looked for a certain subject in the index, it could be spread across 3 different pages (ie. pg 11, 213, 77). I spent a lot of time during my trip with my nose in this book, and I had...Read more

I have traveled the world with those blue books, and this is the worst. I have never read a travel book that reads more like a where not to go; they might as well have given Hard Rock Cafe London top billing. It read like it was written by a local with distain for tourists and a deep rooted passion to keep them out of the "locals only" places. For instance, the best neighborhood for shopping was ignored, the best clubs for music weren't listed and most restaurants were completely miss represented. Every time I asked a local where they went, even the well-know-among-Londoners places, were either not listed, or so poorly listed, I was shocked when I arrived. I can't say this swears me off my love of the LP series, since I could still read them like novels, but this is on the bottom of the heap.