Lost? Score Some Lonely Planet Maps for Free

I don’t like pegging myself as a tourist. One of my friends used to argue that the Lonely Planet maps were invaluable. I argued that I’d prefer to stare at Google Maps on my phone.

Anyways, whatever your preference, if you just can’t shake the guidebook thing, this is probably the best marriage of both worlds. Lonely Planet (god bless them in their departure from the BBC) has made the maps in their books available free for anyone to download. Right here. You can now stare at your phone or tablet or iDevice to guide you to your nearest stop. Or you can print them. Oh my god, the choice is yours.

These seem to be the post-2011 style Lonely Planet Maps, as Boarding Area seems to point out. They’re also pretty tedious to download, since they’re individual files and aren’t even grouped together by book in a collective ZIP file. (Boarding Area suggests using a mass downloading browser add-on such as DownThemAll! It seems like a decent alternative – sorry, I’ve got no better suggestions at the moment.)

While that’s not clearly ideal, we are talking about offline maps for free. Free! Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?