Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34929 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

Customer Reviews

Dubai- Lonely Planet
Having just come back from Dubai I wonder if the guy who wrote the Lonely Planet guide actually liked the place as he was quite negative about some aspects. He had refuted the 7 star status of the Burj Al Arab as they did not hold the door open for him. How sad is that! He considered that the Jumeriah Beach Hotel was looking tired! We stayed in the Jumeriah Beach and it was excellen,t nothing looked tired and the service was beyond reproach. Dubai is a unique place not overbrimming with culture due to the nature of the expansion but it is a great holiday destination.
Our travelleing companions had Time Out's Dubai Travel Guide and this was much better than the Lonely Planet.

Pooooor book
I brought this book on a recommendation on Amazon which is why I felt I had to write a review. Its not a very good book. I didn't expect much (it was my second choice as Time Out, rated far better by most for Dubai anyway, was out of stock).

What so bad about it:
1. AWFUL Maps. THe large pull out map lacks detail, in many cases it omits street names, landmarks and has to be used in conjunction with maps in the book. This rather defeats the point of a pull out map. The person who thought including wast swathes of irrelevant Dubai into the map instead of clarifying, amplifying and signing the relevant parts clearly has never been to Dubai.
2. AWFUL Maps. If the above wasn't bad, the book divides up Dubai into 5 sections and has a more detailed map on each section in each part of the book. The problem is that all of the maps while covering overlapping areas do not contain the same markers (e.g. hotels or buildings) so basically you can't use the maps for any useful purpose such as moving from one area to the other. Coupled with above, you might as well throw this book into the creek for its cartographical uses.
3. Vague, lame commentary. OK it's Dubai, not Istanbul. Don't expect detailed historical information or opinion but the five sections the book covers contain on average one paragraph about the area and then a list of hotels and restaurants. If I wanted lists I would use Yahoo for free.
4. Poor layout. The book is divided into areas and then into 'themes' such as eating, sleeping, entertainment. I suppose this would be useful for some people but I found it difficult and annoying. For example, if I'm in Deira, the Deira section contains scant information of any use to me and has a few restaurants I should try. I then have to check out the eating section, try finding and circling those in Deira (they are not listed by area) and then look back to the crap Deira map and figure out whether any of the restaurants were near me. Yeah, you can imagine I did that once and bought another book.
5. No information on other Emirates. There is no information on Sharjah, Abu Dhabi or any other 'day trip'/nearby areas like Oman. I ended up buying another small book for Abu Dhabi and Sharjah as I ended up going there. Most texts do have nearby areas as its obvious some people MAY take a 40 min trip to a nearby emirate.

Overall, very poor. For a good map I recommend a fiver spent on EXPLORER DUBAI MAP.

Maps not great
I did not find the maps detailed enough. In fact, there was one restaurant on a map which appears to have been shown in the wrong location. Overall, the book was useful.