[.ca] Lonely Planet Eastern Europe (ISBN 1741044766)

good for budget accommodations:
I used both Lonely Planet Eastern Europe and Lets Go Eastern Europe on a recent trip to Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. I found most of my accommodations through the listings in Lonely Planet. Lets Go offered fewer options and missed some of the best places. However, for places to eat, Lets Go was better. Almost all of the eating places included in Lonely Planet were upscale tourist restaurants which seemed to have been listed only to satisfy the requirements of editors. Maybe the Lonely Planet updaters are paid so little they simply do not have the time to seek out the really good spots I found on my own after much searching. Lonely Planets maps were more detailed than those in Lets Go with almost everything mentioned in the text marked on the maps. The usual downside of Lonely Planet maps is that the typeface is so small the maps are almost illegible in poor lighting. I am aware of that series-wide defect and made enlarged photocopies of those maps I knew I would need before leaving home. I sliced both books up with a sharp knife and taped together the pages I needed so I would not have to carry chapters on countries I had no intention of visiting. The background information in both guidebooks as shallow and laden with stereotypes, but I suppose that is all you can expect from publications of this kind. Lets Go often covered sights missing from Lonely Planet which made it worthwhile to carry both guides. Yet if I had to chose one over the other, I guess I would pick Lonely Planet as places to stay are the travelers biggest daily expense. Now is a good time to visit Eastern Europe as prices will shoot up when these countries adopt the euro. For example, in the summer of 2008, travel in Lithuania cost about a third the price of doing the same thing in Holland.