Monthly Archives: November 2007

When I first started traveling in college, I loved the “Let’s Go” series of travel guides as they led to one to the cheapest of the cheap all over Europe. Sometime in my mid-to-late twenties they failed to satisfy and I moved my travel guide book loyalty to the Lonely Planet series. Lonely Planet had a wider range of budget, moderate, and higher priced options for each town, as well as write ups on more of the history and points of interest, less of “Let’s Go”s nightlife and ultra-cheap focus.
I find Fodors guide books to be too stuffy, the DK guides to be very broad in terms of photos and visual diagrams but missing in actually moderate priced places to stay. So, I have kept my loyalty the last ten years to Lonely Planet. In 2004, I purchased the Lonely Planet Ireland guide and it was my faithful companion on Erika & I’s 2004 Thanksgiving trip to Ireland, as well as my year at Trinity College, Dublin. But most of the Lonely Planet guide books I have used are written mostly by locals, not travelers, thus big bits are left out, the bits that locals wouldn’t care about but travelers would.
Here is my list of things that I would love Lonely Planet to change, fix or cover in their otherwise excellent travel guide books:
1) No hotels near the major airports are ever listed. Not in the Ireland LP, not in the London LP, not in the Spain, nor Andalucia, nor Scotland, nor… Sometimes the most practical thing when you have an early departure or late arrival is stay within a mile or two of the airport. Lonely Planet, please put in a few airport hotels or B&Bs for each major airport. Thanks.
2) Area codes or Full Phone Numbers next to listings: The Lonely Planet guides list country phone codes in the back, and major area codes at the section head, but not next to the listing. While driving two nights ago, we were flipping to 3 separate section trying to get the full number to dial from my mobile to find a B&B to stay at. Very frustrating, esp. when one’ mobile’s sim chip is not from the same country as one is in.
3) Lonely Planet, please list wifi (wireless internet) locations, free wifi and for pay. This matters. Not just internet cafes or which places to stay have a stand alone computer, but please list wifi for every one of the listings in your books that has wifi. One of the hotels we stayed at in Ireland this last week had free wifi, one had none, and one had paid wifi. I would have booked my stay with preference for internet connection. All the better to blog with and finish up the client loose ends. kthnxbai.
4) Please list more neo-lithic, bronze age, and iron age or other non-major historical sites in the UK & Ireland. If you are a local writer for these guides, you probably think Americans or Germans or Italians are nuts for going to visit old hunks of rock out in muddy fields. These old sites are delightful and really worth exploring. Please list with some directions and explanations.
I am writing this from the Dublin airport where Mom and I are waiting to fly to London Heathrow to start our week in Southern England. I went to the big bookstore in the Dublin Airport mall to get a Lonely Planet England or UK guide so we can know where we are going and where we are going to stay. In an interesting twist, the whole section of travel guides at the airport had Mexico, California, Peru, Egypt, New Zealand, and many other smaller countries, but did not have a single travel guide for the UK, England or Wales. London (3 different publishers), Scotland (2 types) and Edinburgh, but no England or UK…
Hopefully, a bookstore at Heathrow will have a Lonely Planet England. ;o)