Poland: Special section on hiking in the Tatra Mountain (Lonely Planet Country Guides) [Tapa blanda]

I recently traveled to Warsaw, Krakow, and Wroc'aw. I often rely on Lonely Planet books and purchased the most recent Poland edition for my trip. Unfortunately, I found the book sorely lacking and I had to rely on supplemental guidebooks in each of the cities I visited. Here are three reasons why I found the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Poland particularly disappointing:

1. No walking tour routes. I find Lonely Planet walking tour routes helpful when I'm first orienting to a new city. However, the latest Poland edition does not contain any walking tour routes for the cities I visited. Instead of suggesting a walking tour route, the Lonely Planet contains a suggestion to "leave the guidebook in my room" and instead explore the city without it (page 132). I found this very annoying and wondering why I purchased the book at all.
2. Little public transportation information. Warsaw is a very spread out city, though many sites are accessible by transit. Unlike other Lonely Planet guides I have used, the Poland version has very little information on accessing the country's public transportation systems and absolutely no transit maps for any of Poland's major cities.
3. Missing information on major sites. For example, Centennial Hall in Wroc'aw isn't even mentioned in the book, despite the fact that it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006.

One major positive: the information Lonely Planet provided on hotels and restaurants in each city seemed spot-on. Perhaps it's a guide best used for basic logistics only.

This book is OK- you're better off with it than without it, but I have seen much better guidebooks. The maps are confusing to read and have slight inaccuracies- in every city, the free maps from the tourist information were better. The book is also overenthusiastic about everything, so you can't really pick out what are the most important things to see. Also most of the restaurants and hotels reviewed in the book are quite expensive compared to what is available in Poland. Nine times out of ten, I found a good quality restaurant, hotel, or room for much cheaper than what was listed in the guide. I did find the section on the cuisine and vodka interesting and pretty helpful. However, I bought this book specifically because of the section about hiking in the Tatras, but it didn't have much detail at all. Generally, this book is not awful but I was disappointed.

I got this guidebook for a trip to Poznan. At first I didn't find it that useful, partly because there was so much text and no pictures. I find it hard to know what I want to see, if I can't visualize it. But I enjoyed using it as a reference once I was there, looking up sights I'd seen and finding out more history and information. There wasn't a lot of information at the sights in the city, so this was great to use to look up and find out more of the history. I also appreciated the information on what to expect when traveling in Poland. I found that information spot-on and was glad to have read it before.