Lonely Planet Rome (1st ed)

Rating:
Summary: Just sad. Poorly organized, boring, incompetent.
Review: For some reason, Lonely Planet just cannot win with any Italian destination. Tuscany, Venice, and now Rome - all just plain bad. The book is more or less unusable: the good photo of the cover is probably the best thing of the guide. The rest is worthless waste of paper: "deep thoughts" and irrelevant ticket and accommodation advice (should be called "How To Pay More For Everything"), recycled and reused from all other LP guides, a fair bit of pinko rhetoric coupled with tired, uninspired and amateurish writing about the very things that make Rome enchanting. I do not know any other guide which would be just so hopelessly incompetent about sightseeing information as Lonely Planet. This is a triumph of cheap "been-here-done-that" backpacker, the swan song of the great unwashed.

Other guides are like well-informed friends that tell you about all the breathtaking sights of the most beautiful cities in the world. This one would be just a grumpy old malodorous fella who volunteers to spend his time with you: you've heard all his stories and he is a prejudiced and annoying smelly bore, but he'll spend time with you as long as you keep buying him drinks.

Rating:
Summary: Rome, the dream city
Review: I have just come home after a week in Rome. Travelled there with a backpack filled with travel books and novels about Rome. I do travel alot, and usually the Lonely Planet guides have been very helpful. But this one was not. At least not helpful to take with me when I walked around. The book has alot of information, but it is hard to find the information when you need it, the text is usually quite boring, the maps are of very little use, and the book all in all looks dull.
There is one exeption though, the boxed texts can sometimes be very useful and even written with some charm. The first day I was in Rome LP's Rome followed me in my backpack, but in the evening I took it out - it was of no use when I wandered around, and I had several books so much more interesting and helpful.

I really hope the next edition of the book will be better, knowing other LP books I will give it another chance.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

Rating:
Summary: poorly organised and outdated
Review: This book has major flaws as a guidebook. It is relatively rich in informaiton and interesting as a read if you want to know about Rome and useful if it is used as a referrence alongside other guidebook (which is what we did in the end), but if you want to walk around the city with this book in hand, you can hardly find what you want to see and figure out where you are and what it is in front of you.

Because in places like Rome you have all sorts of historic things lying about all over, you need one, a useful guide how you can go about without missing "must sees" (model course with good map and good instructions), two, a clue/instruction how to recognise something important and not to go past it without realising what it is - many ruins and churches look similar if you don't know them (again good map that can be easily referred back to entries of the text), and three, you want to know what it is when you came across something interesting while roaming around the city. This book was no help in any case. Imagine - if you come across something interesting which has no tags saying what it is, which is often the case in Rome, especially where there are so many ruins in proximity, you have to determine either from your location (good map is needed) or marker (what is near-by). Neither of them is provided in the guidebook. Everytime we came across a church or ruins that looked interesting (some of them really famous), we had to spend quite a long time trying to figure out where we were and what it was, sometimes in vain (maps unclear and complicated, the text just listed items with no indication where are they, how to find them etc.) Later we realised that we had missed out some of the must-sees even though we visited places nearby because there are no clue on what we can see if we are in a particular place and the maps were quite useless. Also, in some occasions we actually saw a wrong thing believing it was what we wanted to see, to be later surprised to come across the real thing (again poor map and lack of a marker and proper guide) or just passed across something without realising what it was.

We also found some of the information on restaurants were outdated. Once we entered this highly recommended restaurant, which was flooded with tourists and food was really bad (I had very very dry, hard steak - I could not believe it, as although I am not a big meat eater, I find meat dishes in Italy usually wonderful). The service was pretty bad too (sort of "be greatful we are feeding you" attitude). When we asked for a bill the server (I think he was owner as well) dared to say that "Service cahrge is not included", demanding for tips. We left without paying any tip, greatly regretting we missed one precious meal in Rome and relearning a great lesson - if there are a lot of tourists and no locals, just walk away.

Having said this, with more thoughts into how to make things more clear, I think it can be turned into a good guidebook. Improved quality of the maps (and probably more maps to highlight important areas), which can be easily referred back to the text and vice versa, and reworking structure of the text and giving more instructions/markers where and how to find monuments will be absolutely necessary. But if you're looking for a propper guidebook to take you through Rome, you better wait for a revised edition or get something else.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly Organized, not very helpful
Review: This is perhaps the worst travel guide I have ever used. The maps are essentially unusuable and completely unhelpful. The index did not contain such basic references as the Sistine Chapel or the Palace of Augustus. It also commonly referred to monuments/sites by their Italian labels, and this proved to be irritating and inefficient. Lastly, the guide was missing a huge amount of critical information on the city. It is a far inferior work to the "Rough Guide," and anyone who wants a free copy of the Lonley Planet Guide can email me for mine.