Lonely Planet Vienna

Average customer rating:

Up the Danube without a Paddle
New format messes up a classic
Incredibly helpful
A handy guide to more than just the tourist sites

Lonely Planet Vienna
Neal Bedford
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1740598512

Book Description

Let us introduce you to Vienna, the Lonely Planet way. We'll show you magnificent baroque palaces, but also lead you through the city's most atmospheric hidden alleyways. We'll bring you Mozart in the Staatsoper but also give you the rundown on Viennese electronica, and we'll serve you traditional coffee-house culture but also guide you to vineyard-studded hills where you can drink young wine under the trees. Whichever Vienna you want, you'll find it in this guide.

GET THE INSIDE STORY with our resident author's top tips and favorite places, and interviews with local experts.

CHOOSE YOUR POISON - Vienna's famed coffee houses, traditional wine taverns, and kicking DJ bars are all covered.

GET OFF THE BEATEN TRACK with walking and cycling tours through charming neighborhoods and out into the Vienna Woods.

GO BEYOND SCHNITZEL and discover modern Viennese cuisine with our switched-on take on the city's dining scene.

Customer Reviews:

Up the Danube without a Paddle.......2005-09-01

I packed two guidebooks for my trip to Vienna: this one, and an ancient Michelin Green Guide to Austria that devoted about 20 pages to Vienna. I found the latter more useful, even though much of the information was frozen in a long-forgotten 1978.

It's difficult to look up specific information in this guide, and, once found, it's sometimes misleading. "The regal rooms of Schloss Schonbrunn are in a league of their own in Vienna - the Kaiser apartments of the Hofburg hardly come close." Perhaps. But the Schonbrunn was so packed with tour groups that I ran through the forty rooms that are open for viewing as quickly as possible just to get out of the place. By contrast, a visit to the Hofburg included a moving exhibit on the wife of the emperor Franz Joseph; for me, this humanized the rooms and added a depth that the mere viewing of endless amounts of gold leaf could not.

The typeface of this book is too small and faint, and the maps are unreadable. A reference for the Albertina is given as `Map pp.240-3.' Turning to page 240, I found tiny dots with tiny numbers going up to 351, but no dot with a 3. After much searching of page 240, I found the 3 on an inset map on page 241. This is inexcusable in a guidebook.

Vienna is too wonderful to entrust to this guide. Friends who carried the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Vienna at least had a book that was readable.

New format messes up a classic.......2004-11-15

I've long been a Lonely Planet fan, never thinking twice about buying the appropriate Lonely Planet book whenever I travel. However, the new format and emphasis of the LP guides has made me re-think my commitment.

Specifically, the "Fact for the Visitor" section has been greatly reduced, and moved under the confusingly titled "Directory" section. Unfortunately, this is difficult to locate because the Table of Contents has been bowdlerized from the former detailed breakdown into a simple section listing. If you want to find a specific piece of information, you now have to guess which section it might be hiding in (as in "Directory" -- which is almost nothing like a directory), then flip the to beginning of that section for the more detailed contents.

The new, less coherent, structure is frustrating enough, but when you get each section, you find it very hard to read. One of the first things that you learn about graphic design and publishing is that sans serif typefaces are difficult to read for long passages and should only be used sparingly. The new guides have turned this on its head, and now very light sans serif faces are used almost everywhere (contrast this with earlier editions where sans serif is only used for headings). I find it difficult to read for more than a few paragraphs, which is very annoying.

Being able to locate, and read the information are the two most fundamental things a guidebook needs to have, and these new editions really fail.

Which raises the biggest problem of all -- LP seems to be changing its emphasis from a guide which provided lots of useful information to the budget traveler as well as the higher end independent traveler. The new guide really de-emphasizes the budget traveler, in favor of being a generic, middle of the road guide. Which, from someone who looks to get the most from his travel dollar, is extremely disappointing. In contrast with my second edition copy of this guide, the fourth edition lists half as many budget accommodations, and twice as many mid-range to expensive ones.

On the plus side, the maps *finally* include a grid, making it much easier to find locations on them.

On the whole though, LP has taken the guides I've loved for years, and made them much less valuable to me. In the future, I'll be shopping around for guides, instead of knowing that I can trust LP without a second thought.

Incredibly helpful.......2002-01-06

The fancy of going to Vienna next summer crossed my mind more than once so I decided to pick this up just to get some more information on the City of Music. It's a very concise book that can be easily toted around in a bag or pocket, which I immediately liked because should I go I would want to keep it on hand. I liked the layout for places to stay, going from campgrounds to hostels, to the hotels, going from one star to five. It has a great listing for restaurants and has the city pretty much covered in respects to places to visit and a calendar of events, which makes planning a trip a lot easier. The history was a nice added bonus for someone not knowing about the city, as well as historical people that spent time/grew up in Vienna (ie: Mozart). Colour photos and things such as political mindset, attitude towards children, the legal system are nice touches as well. However, take the prices with a grain of salt, especially with the new introduction of the Euro.

A handy guide to more than just the tourist sites.......2000-06-13

The 2nd edition of Lonely Planet's guide to Vienna is a welcome edition to the guidebooks on the Austrian capital. Of course it contains the usual information: how to get there, how to get around, and what there is to see. But this book also tells the reader about other important facts such as the climate, history, government/politics, bicycling, and farily current email and web addresses. The Lonely Planet guide also has lots of interesting tidbits of information that most of the more staid guides do not, such as info on Lauda Air, gay Vienna, The Third Man (movie), and Viennese actionism. The maps are excellent, and prices (as of 1998) are listed for most attractions. I doubt that a more versatile guide exists.

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