Lonely Planet Sicily (Regional Guide)

 (11 customer reviews)

I recently bought this guide for a 2 week trip to Sicily this May. I bought 3 guides - Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Blue Guide. This was by far the worst guide I have ever purchased to go anywhere. For example, two of the premier sites to see in Sicily are the cathedral at Monreale - it gets 3 short paragraphs - and the Capella Palatina gets only 2. The getting around advice was generally good, but at 300 pages (including the index at the back), the descrptions of tourist sites and towns left a lot to be desired. I actually wondered if the author had ever been there. The Rough Guide was much better detailed and I like their honest assessment of whether something is worth seeing. The Blue Guide is of course the best touring guide, this one was even pretty good at giving advice on getting around. We did not rent a car and relied on public transportation. I think I could probably have done the entire trip with this one guide. I do not use a guide for hotels or restaurants...Read more

We spent 2 weeks in Sicily in Oct 2007. We used the Lonely Planet Sicily (3rd Edition) and the Blue Guide Sicily (7th Edition). Lonely Planet covers the all the major sites, cities, and towns. Its city maps, with the locations of restaurant, hotels, etc. are extremely helpful. However, it is missing some of the smaller towns and sites, and offers sparse coverage of the east coast of Sicily. Fortunately, the Blue Guide is far, far superior in terms of its comprehensive detail, and quality of information. Indeed the Blue Guide is one of the best guide books I have ever seen on any region: its intelligence and depth are extraordinary. On the other hand, the Blue Guide city maps, while graphically excellent, are lacking the markers for restaurant and hotels that Lonely Planet has. And there were days when we did not feel like lugging the Blue Guide's 512 pages around. So ultimately, we were glad to have both.

I purchased the latest edition of this guide hoping that the problems with the previous edition would have been addressed. To be fair, I have not gone on my trip yet, but I have been very disappointed and frustrated with the book as I use it plan my trip.

I am a huge fan of Lonely Planet, but this book isn't even formatted like an LP guide -- it has more of a A Rough Guide format which I don't care for. Worst of all, I have stumbled on enough inaccurate information that I now feel the need to double-check everything. I would give this LP Guide a pass.