Lonely Planet Discover Greece [ペーパーバック]

At nearly 400 pages the lonely planet guide (lower caps are their own) is thorough. It measures about 8 inches by 5, so though too large for a pocket, it will fit easily enough into a bag or a backpack, even a fanny pack, if you're so inclined. Greece is broken down into seven distinct regions with plenty of maps and photos for each (in full color! proclaims the cover.) My main quibbles are two, an exclusively historical focus and lack of a foldout map. In Greece, I guess it's fair to argue that history is integral, but you could say that of any country. The 21st Century rates a single paragraph on page 330-something, and unless you're a time traveler, this is the century that you'll be visiting in. I also believe that larger guides should contain a portable fold-out map, something the lonely planet does not provide. Nevertheless, this is still a perfectly reasonable and functional book.

Discover Greece is very well-organized - you can easily locate information that correspond to the region(s) of Greece that interest you.

Organization
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- Maps of the Places of Interest
The guide starts right off with a map of Greece color-coded by regions: Northern Greece, Central Creece & The Ionian Islands, Athens & Attica, Peloponnese & The Saronic Gulf Islands, Cyclades, Evia & The SPorades, Dodecanese, and Crete. Each region has a page number so you can quickly locate the chapter that covers the region. The edges of each page of a chapter has the same color-coding as its corresponding region on the map.

- Greece's Top 25 Experiences
An entire chapter is devoted to the best of Greece. The chapter gives you a bird's eye view of the best places of interest in Greece: Delphi, Santorini, Rhodes' Medieval Old Town, and other must-see points of interest.

- Greece's Top Itineraries
Greece's Top Itineraries is a chapter devoted to themed itieraries: city life, ancient sites, and towns and beaches.

- Greece One Region at a Time
The guide is divided into chapters that correspond to the regions in Greece, namely, Athens & Attica, Peloponnes the Saronic Gulf Islands, Central Greece & the Ionian Islands, Northern Greece, Cyclades, Evia & the Sporades, Crete, Dodecanese. :-

> Each chapter is color-coded (Athens & Attica: Red, Peloponnes the Saronic Gulf Islands: Teal, Central Greece & the Ionian Islands: Light Green, Northern Greece: Orange, Cyclades, Evia & the Sporades: Purple, Crete: Dark Green, Dodecanese: Pink).

> Every chapter contains street level maps that are detailed enough to navigate with.

> Each chapter is divided into sections as follows:
o Highlights
. major places of interest
. eateries
. ... etc.
o The Best
. (e.g. places to chill, windows to the past)
o Things You Need To Know
. vital statics [telephone code, population, area]
. neighborhoods in a nutshell
. emergency numbers
. getting around
. ... etc.
o Itineraries
. (suggested itineraries)
o Discover (indepth coverage on places to discover)
. orientation
. museums and galleries
. sights and activities
. parks and gardens
. attractions
. tours
. festivals and events
. sleeping
. eating
. drinking
. entertainment
. shopping
. getting around
. ... etc.

> The "If you like" cross references throughout each chapter is a really great feature! For example, "If you like the Byzantine & Christian Museum, we think you will like Church of Agii Theodori."

- Vital Information
In addition, there are chapters on the Architecture, History, Culture of Greece, Ettiquette as well as Schedules for boat services and domestic flights for island hopping, local tourist offices, emergency numbers, and other vital information.

- Itineraries
If you are paralyzed by the sheer number of places to visit and can't decide how to plan out your sightseeing, the guide has suggested itineraries organized by (i) each region of Greece (Athens & Attica, Peloponnes the Saronic Gulf Islands, Central Greece & the Ionian Islands, Northern Greece, Cyclades, Evia & the Sporades, Crete, Dodecanese), (ii) top Itineraries for Greece organized by the length of your trip, (iii) themes

- High Quality Color Photographs
Discover Greece is filled with beautiful color photographs of the major attractions . The photographs definitely evoke a hankering to be actually in Greece. I only wish there were more! Each chapter is demarcated with photograph that fills up a full page or both the verso and recto of the book.

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I'm thoroughly impressed with Discover Greece. I'm surprised it didn't receiver a higher rating. It is very well-organized to help you whittle down the list of POI's to select places that interest you most. It is packed with vital tips and information on hotels, eateries, transportation, tours, etc. All in all, I find Discover Greece an immensely helpful resource to help you plan your trip to Greece -- recommended.

I bid you many safe and happy travels! Kaló taksídi! (bon voyage!)

Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
**** Recommended with warm fuzzies.

The Lonely Planet "Discover ..." travel books are a series of compact travel guides that are intended to provide the essential information about a country while being compact, light in weight and small in size, and replete with the heavy use of full-color photographs and maps throughout its pages. While this travel guide's 384 pages is less than half the length of Lonely Planet's far more thorough coverage of Greece in their similarly-priced Lonely Planet Greece (Country Travel Guide) book, I get the impression that their "Discover ..." series is more meant to compete with the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides and Apa Insight Guides, which, for years, were the main travel guide books that offered plenty of tantalizing color photos, albeit at the expense of informative text. Frommer's and Fodor's have also gotten into the "In Full Color" competition to offer more color photography in their travel guides too.

This travel book provides a good all-around high-level coverage of the main highlights of the various regions in Greece. It offers suggestions for 5-day, 10-day, and 2-week itineraries, some general trip planning information, and various general maps are interspersed throughout the book. The end of the book has a very useful "Directory, Transport, & Island Hopping" section that describes various essential information that you should know. In fact, I would have preferred that this section was moved more towards the beginning of the book. The inside of the back cover offers pronunciation tips to several dozen common Greek words and phrases.

If you are totally planning a trip to Greece by yourself, this travel guide would make a great "starter book" to read, and whet your Greece travel appetite, before you acquire more in-depth books and maps once you start planning, deciding upon, and finalizing your itinerary. But you could definitely use more in-depth information, either by reading other books or researching on the Internet, before departing on your trip. Just reading this compact guide by itself might be sufficient if you are joining a package tour group to Greece where everything has already been planned out for you. But even then, you should read other books and research your tour group's itinerary to learn more of the background, history, and information about the places that you are about to see since Greece is a country that is very rich in history.