Tuscany (Lonely Planet Regional Guides) (Paperback)

Lonely Planet has a long tradition for producing brilliant guides to less-explored destinations - and messing things up in a major way when they are dealing with places like Tuscany, or Venice, or New York.

This time, the problem is not the trademark self-righteous attitude or a preachy tone. It's just the general feeling of the guide having been done on the cheap. It's difficult to justify this - the book costs the same as every other guide on the market, thank you very much.

The other reviewer noted chaos and lack of focus - it is difficult to disagree. The guide boasts of "strict hierarchical structure" of its headlines - well, if you say so. It is very difficult to find anything, there are no visual "hooks" for easy navigation, and the only help in orientation can be offered by meaningless, heart-stoppingly ugly and amateurish drawings, placed here and there (they are worse than even chapter icons in Rough Guides that remind you of artwork adorning leaflets from a social security office or a community clinic).

And the photos - yes, I understand that they are not the main selling point of this guide, but just how CHEAP you have to be to find something like that (especially when they seen perfectly capable of finding excellent pictures for their covers)? What are these - your aunt's holiday snaps made with a disposable camera?

Maps are poor and confusing. How difficult it is to include a clear map - in color? How expensive would this make the guide?
Information on tickets is so out-of-date and irrelevant that it beggars belief. People in Europe and America are finding cheap tickets on the Internet in ten minutes, low-cost airlines are all over the place, but somebody needs to tell Lonely Planet. The guide is like a senile grandfather who cannot stop talking garbage about his younger days: apex fares... super apex... courier fligts... Why waste paper on this?

The same out-of-date irrelevance is true about Money section. Maybe Lonely Planet is on commission, but who uses travellers checks these days? (Probably same people who go to airline office ask for "apex fare ticket"). This is supposed to be a guide for shoestring travellers - yes, they will really appreciate the worst exchange rate imaginable and a commission of up to 10%. No wonder some people complain Europe is expensive - after guidance like that and leaving half of your money to banks and excange offices, there will not be much in your pocket to pay for lodging and meals.

But the main reason why you should not bother to buy this book is its poor, uninspired and dull writing. No attraction, no treasure of art, no historic building is spared this indifferent and lazy treatment: it feels as if they didn't want to write about all these churches but they had to. This is strange: this guide often poses as a staunch critic of mass tourism and commercial crowds. Here, Lonely Planet adopts exactly the approach of box-ticking thoughtless crowd: "Been there, done that."

To sum up - if you are planning to buy this, please think again. There are better guides for listings and practicalities (Rough Guide), there are better guides for signtseeing or culture (Blue Guide or Cadogan), and there are better all-rounders (DK Eyewitness). Even if Lonely Planet until now has been your favorite guide and you are a loyal follower, please think again. You will do yourself a favour.