Los Angeles Travel Guide Encounter
New LA Guide from Lonely Planet in Recommended Pocket-Sized Series
A Los Angeles Travel Guide is among the best new guidebook titles from Lonely Planet in their pocket-sized and purse-sized Encounter series, and is highly recommended
A new Los Angeles travel guide? Sometimes you might wonder just how many guidebooks we need to places like LA, London and Paris. But we do, because cities like these change constantly. Guidebook publishers are also always coming up with new formats, trying to reflect – or predict – what today's travelers want.
The pocket-sized and purse-sized Encounters series from Lonely Planet is a fairly new addition to the travel guide bookshelves, launched in Spring 2007. There are 13 new titles added in September 2007, including Los Angeles, Dublin and Dubai.
So what's different about the Lonely Planet Encounters series? Mainly that they are written by people who live or have lived in the cities they're writing about. The hope is that they will give readers an insider's guide to a city, when most travel guides to Los Angeles and anywhere else are usually written by outsiders. They may be travel guide writers who know the cities well through frequent visits, and it isn't always possible to find good travel guide writers who live in every city and country that a publisher like Lonely Planet wants to cover. So does it work?
If the Encounter Los Angeles travel guide is anything to go by, then yes, it does. The guide is attractive and reasonably-priced, full of good photos even though it will fit into pocket or purse, and its 208 pages are packed with insider information even though it is in conventional guidebook format – what to see, where to stay, where to eat, the best shopping and so on.
*
Los Angeles Travel Guide: The Author
Amy C. Balfour is not your conventional guidebook writer. She's a former attorney who threw in her safe job to go to Los Angeles and work as a screenwriter. She got a gig as a writer's assistant on Law and Order, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Women's Health, Backpacker and Travelers' Tales.
*
Los Angeles Travel Guide: The Photographer
Davis Peevers' lovely photos really add the appeal of the Encounter Los Angeles Travel Guide. He has worked on many Lonely Planet guidebooks, and for newspapers, magazines and websites worldwide. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1984.
*
Spread throughout this Los Angeles travel guide are one-page interviews with local people, adding their recommendations for favorite LA restaurants, the best beaches, best margaritas, where to go salsa dancing and other insider tips. But it's the insiders the author chooses that make these interesting reads as well. One is actor Jim Marshall, who was Charlie Sheen's stand-in on Two and a Half Men. Another is Keith Gear, described in a very LA way as 'surfer, teacher and dog-bed designer'. Then there's Linda Welton and Shae Lyons, who sell maps to the movie stars' homes.
The guide begins with 12 Los Angeles Highlights, including the Pacific Coast Highway, Venice, the Warner Brothers tour, the Griffith Park Observatory and the South Bay area. The city's then divided up into districts, with a mini-guide for each one.
This purse-sized LA guidebook doesn't give the comprehensive coverage of sights, bars, shops and restaurants that a full-size guidebook does, and the Los Angeles hotel listings are pretty brief too. You may want to buy the regular Lonely Planet Los Angeles guidebook for those. But this Encounter guide gives an enjoyable and interesting insider's view of the city, and comes with a free pull-out map that provides a street index and metro map as well. It's definitely the Los Angeles travel guide that I'll be putting in my purse next time I'm out and about in LA.
*
The Encounter Los Angeles Travel Guide from Lonely Planet costs $11.99 in the USA and £6.99 in the UK. See the Lonely Planet website.
*
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
