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If you are traveling to Turkey, this book is a must. It has an excellent chapters about Turkey's history, culture and environment. The detailed descriptions of the towns and cities are very good.
We just used this guide -- thankfully supplemented by others -- to travel around western Turkey, including Izmir, Selcuk and Istanbul. Consequently, we ended up staying at an abysmal hotel in Izmir and eating at any number of subpar restaurants. We found it uniformly atrocious. Lonely Planet, I think, enjoys telling you *every* available restaurant, hotel, and cultural attraction, and aggressively refuses to filter. When we switched to the Time Out guide for Istanbul, we had nothing but success. I recommend Time Out Istanbul in the highest possible terms, and DISrecommend Lonely Planet Turkey with the same intensity.
The property owners (especuially in Turkey.). How come EVERY property I contacted quoted me the prices being MULTIPLE TIMES higher, than what the newest, crisp copy of this book says. Reading the accommodation sections throughout the book and comparing them to the REALITY, I am getting the following impression about "how it works": a person from the Lonely Planet contacts the property and says: "Hi, I am from Lonely Planet travel guide. and respond to the Lonely Planet with some totally irrelevant, dirt cheap and UNTRUE rates. So. immediately sense a great opportunity for them (their propery is going to be listed in the worldwide travel guide. The Lonely Planet prints out that garbage, in many thousand copies.
When I requested an explanation why the prices they quoted were multiple times higher than the ones listed in the book, our nice and friendly correspondence has abruptly ended. Would you please tell me how much your rooms are.". I had especially unpleasant experience with the "prominent" Shoestring Pansion in Goreme. wow). What happens next. I have never received another word from them. expect to pay for your accommodations in Turkey much more than the Lonely Planet listings and for the Lonely Planet I would wish to investigate the hotel prices in a little more professional way, before they actually give them away to the world.Very disappointing.
Im not the kind of guy that usually buys travel guides, but I was impressed with this lonely planet. It has excellent coverage and ideas for alternative trips, and this is the new version which was printer in Apr 07 (so its very upto date) worth purchasing.
for instance USA. The proper name of the country is TURKIYE, not turkey. Why do the english speaking countries change the names of all existing countries but yet force those countries to use their own created names. This should not be so. If an existing country has their own name, it shouldnt be changed, therefore it's TURKIYE.please make a note in the future
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