London (Lonely Planet London) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I am currently planning a trip to the UK and found that this guide, though not the brand I normally gravitate to was a great resource in helping to answer many of my questions and put together a plan for the days we plan to have in London. The guide breaks down to several sections: Plan your trip, which covers top sites, what you need to know, top itineraries, sites that you might like to visit based on your interests, a month to month schedule of festivals, planning a trip with kids, what you can do for free (yeah, some of the museums are free!), a section on museums & galleries, where to eat, drink and what to do for nightlife, entertainment, shopping, sports and a gay/lesbian section. Explore London covers the neighborhoods giving you a flavor of each section, tips, sites and their recommendations. Understanding London, breaks down London today, history, architecture, Literary history, theater & dance, art & fashion, music, film and media. Lastly is the survival guide with transportation, a directory and index. At the very end you have a paper map of London which also includes the bus and tube stops.

The writing about the sites is clear & very informative, telling you what not to miss, and giving you the admission, the location and website and phone #'s for the site. I really enjoy having all this at my fingertips as well as some of the London visitor sites, which is helping me to better plan, along with tips and tricks I'm reading about on the tripadvisor site (highly recommended).

Overall, I felt better after reading through the book that I was starting to narrow down what I wanted to see and where I felt I wanted to spend my tourist $. With a city as lively and large as London, with so much to do it can be a bit overwhelming deciding where to start, but as I saw where things were located and what interested me, it started to feel like it was coming together a bit.

My one personal "con" is that I prefer a glossier book. I also generally gravitate to the guides that have more pictures. The information seems about the same, however, I really do love thumbing through the pictures and enjoy seeing them while I'm trying to decide what goes on the "A" list, and what will get relegated to the "B" list if we have time and $.

Overall, I feel like this book is a very good start in researching London and one that is not so large that I will feel like I can't tote it along with me in my suitcase.

Although I've vacationed in England several times, I've never been to London proper. On each of my trips, I flew into Gatwick airport, avoiding busy Heathrow, picked up a rental car (right-hand drive, manual transmission and motoring on the "wrong" side of the road--what fun!) and immediately set out for the countryside. My destinations included aviation, automobile and military museums, breweries, Stonehenge (of course) and "off the beaten path" attractions throughout southern England and, via the Channel Tunnel on one trip, in northern France. I gave London a wide berth simply because I generally prefer to avoid congested, chaotic, hard-to-get-around-in major cities. However, I realize that, by skirting London, I missed a great deal of what the country has to offer. So the city is on my "must-see" list for my next vacation to England, whenever that might be. In the meantime, I'll travel there from my armchair using Lonely Planet's outstanding "London" city guide.

Some of the recent Lonely Planet guidebooks I've gotten through the Amazon Vine program have been unimpressive, and have even inspired me to offer editorial comments about how good they used to be compared with how they are now. But "London" is an exception. This is a really good guidebook. Although I lack the first-hand experience with the city to say how accurate or comprehensive it is, I can say for sure that it is attractive, colorful, extremely well organized and exceptionally easy to use. It has a lot of features that I really like. For example:

-- All the maps are found together in the last 45 pages--that's in addition to the larger pull-out city map bound inside the back cover.

-- The city's vast area is organized into 10 neighborhoods, each of which gets from 15 to more than 60 color-coded pages of detailed information on attractions, restaurants, lodging, cultural activities, shopping, entertainment, drinking and nightlife, and so on.

-- Many "Top Sights" sidebars are scattered throughout, set off by eye-catching blue headings, in addition to the main text. Each offers a "Practicalities" listing of such things as the page number of the relevant map, website, physical address, admission fee, hours of operation and Tube stop. These are really handy and easy to use.

-- The detailed floor plans of such places as the British Museum, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Victoria & Albert Museum are pretty cool.

-- The balance between text and photos tilts heavily toward text. This is not a "picture book." The sparse photos in it are relevant to the text but of secondary importance. Stretches of 30 or 40 pages with nary a photo may put off some readers, but I prefer information to pretty pictures.

-- A very nice and highly informative 50-page-plus "Understand London" section covers modern London, its history, architecture, literature, theatre, dance, art, fashion, music and film. This is an excellent capsule summary that puts what you'll see there into the proper historical and cultural perspective.

Lonely Planet's "London" is an outstanding guidebook that will be one of the first things I stick into my backpack the next time I catch an airliner bound for England.

The book has lots of good info on London. However be warned, the maps and images are not easy to read or use when viewed on Kindle.