Travel Reads: “Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights” by Lonely Planet

This world is full of wonders. Lonely Planet has compiled a list of 1000 of them for you to put on your bucket list and organized them thematically.

Carma holding a copy of Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights

Specs

Title: Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights
Editor/Author: Lonely Planet, Andrew Bain, Kayla Ryan, Nigel Wallis, Rachel Williams, Ben Handicott, Belinda Dixon, Carolyn Bain, Nana Luckham, Tim Richards, Sarah Baxter, Bridget Blair, Paul Bloomfield, Rose Mulready, Abigail Hole, Andy Murdock
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1742202934
ISBN-13: 978-1742202938
Available on Amazon in paperback.

Summary of Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights

From natural wonders to historical sites, Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights is a compendium of sights to see around the world.

What Worked for Me

From the Table of Contents, it is easy to find the types of sights you might be interested in seeing. Those that I think a Genre Traveler would be interested are:

  • Most Fairytale-Like European Castles (pp. 14-17)
  • Devils Tower, Wyoming (pp. 30-31), from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Flashiest Lighthouses (pp. 40-41)
  • Baker Street, England (p. 50), from Sherlock Holmes
  • Most Intriguing Lost Cities (pp. 56-59)
  • Most Mysterious Sights (pp. 66-69)
  • Sights from British Childhood Literature (pp. 134-15), including Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter
  • Most Fascinating Corpses (pp. 150-153)
  • Best Prehistoric Cave Paintings (pp. 178-179)
  • Best Dinosaur Digs (pp. 194-197)
  • Medieval Sights (pp. 220-223)
  • Greatest Bookshops (pp. 228-229)
  • Most Surreal Ghost Towns (pp. 278-281)
  • Greatest Viking Sights (pp. 308-311)
  • Spookiest Buildings (pp. 338-339)
  • Sights Most Featured in the Movies (pp. 346-349)

Each entry gives you a concise explanation of what it is and why you might want to see it.

What Didn’t Work for Me

This is really an encyclopedia more than a travel guide. Because it is cover so much territory, you don’t really learn much about any particular spot. I think this works better as a library resource or, even better, an online database.

Recommendation

If you like collecting encyclopedias, then this might be a good one to add to your collection. Otherwise, I just don’t think its worth purchasing. You can get much of this information online.

Score for Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights

colored palm tree
colored palm tree
colored palm tree
grey palm tree
grey palm tree

Pick up your copy on Amazon.com here.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you’ve read past book reviews, you’ll know that I don’t pull my punches when I believe they are warranted. I also try to provide balanced information so you can make your own decision to read or not read the book, even if you disagree with my opinion.

Share your travels!

About the author

As The Genre Traveler, Carma Spence loves to view the world through Genre-Coloured glasses. In other words, she sees the world through a lens of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, where trash cans can be Daleks in disguise and neighborhood forests can harbor faeries and sprites. Magic realism is real! Or at least you can choose to see the world that way to add to the fun and awe of life.