This is the third "Lonely Planet" I bought, and I have already used many more travelling. I had so far been very, very satisfied with all of them, because I have always found all the important information I needed, even though I have used it both for countries I didn't know at all (not even basic notions of the language) and for countries I lived in for years, to travel around other cities and even find some good hints for where I lived, too.
But I was bottomless disappointed with this one. I bought it for a trip to Thessaloniki and an island (I wasn't quite sure which one yet when I left) and have ended up thinking that whoever wrote it didn't really go to the places described in Thessaloniki and has only been to Alonnisos, (the island, in the Sporades) in the very high season.
The general part ist quite okay, and I don't know about the other parts (Athens, Crete, etc.), but the Sporades and Thessaloniki are - I'm sorry to be so explicit - clearly a waste, even though it says in the beginning of the book that they were completely rewritten for the 2006 edition.
My main complaints:
1) LP says that "Kastra" is a place with a lot of nice houses (old city center) and some great pubs and restaurants. We went there and didn't find a sigle one, even though we followed the book's indications to get there. It's more, I'm glad I didn't go there at night (books recommendation), I'd be seriously afraid.
2) There are some restaurant recommendations, but no recommendation of a restaurant area - and believe me, there are some very nice going-out/eating areas in Th., none of them listed in the book. I miss the indication of nice places with a variety of eateries, rather than some lost restaurants in the middle of nowhere.
3) The "author's choice" of a restaurant in Th. is an italian touristy place. It's okay for the author to like whatever he wants, but when you put together this with points 1 and 2, you get a pretty disappointing opinion of it all. Besides, I would have liked an indication of typical dishes in Th. and Alon. (you get this in the LP Spain, for example).
4) Nothing is open in Thessaloniki on sundays - not even the ferry ticket sales offices. I think this is an important piece of information for a traveller, and it's not there. Even if there is a ferry on sunday, it will be difficult (or even impossible) to get the ticket - or if there is a way of buying it, the author didn't find it worth mentioning. A big mistake, which cost us a day.
5) If you want to go to an island from Thessaloniki, it is fairly simple to go to Volos and travel from there; also an important piece of info that's missing. In fact, anything related to transport is missing. And I would have loved to know that the airport is lousy, so I could have eaten before I got there.
6) Still related to transport: ferry connections from A to B are usually only stated either under A or under B, not under both. So if you're trying to figure out a good route for travelling, it's pretty useless to use the book.
7) Alonnisos: it is said in the general part of the LP that the best time to travel to Greece is in spring or autumn. Yet, all the information contained concern summer, and high season. It says, for example, that you can easily hire bikes on Alon.; wrong! You can only do it from june on.
8) Most of the recommended restaurants on Alonn. were closed outside the tourist season. Come on, most backpackers hate high season! Why would I buy a book with useful information for high season, when everything is packed and anyone can give you the info you need? And why would you recommend me to go in spring and then give me unrelated information?
9) It says in the beginning of the book that in Greece, sometimes two words for the same thing/place are used, and that both are sometimes completely different. Well, that's absolutely true. We wanted to go to the old town of Alonnisos, and so I looked it up: it said "Old Alonnisos" and the greek transcription (which was fairly similar). All right, I thought, in this case there aren't two different names. It said there, in the book, that we could go to the town following the signs. But it never occured to the author that ALL the signs to old A. say "Choras", which is the old name. We got pretty lost and in the end had to ask someone on the way. Could have left the heavy book in the hotel.
10) What about dancing?? The only dancing places recommended are those that play dance, reggae and hip hop. I don't need to go to Greece for that. And again: they just open in june.
11) It's impossible to visit the marine park before may 25th (more or less). I would have liked to know that beforehand.
Well, there were some other things, too, but it's too much for here now. Any of these things would have been fairly acceptable: things change, everyone makes mistakes, not all the readers have the same needs. But all of them together are really unacceptable.
I get the feeling this book wasn't written for backpackers. It seems to have been written for high-season young tourists who want to feel like they're adventurous but are doing nothing more than main stream tourism.
