Customer Reviews

Let's Go 2006 Spain & Portugal (Let's Go: Spain & Portugal)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read the reviews for the previous edition of the Let's Go Spain & Portugal book, so I was expecting a book with recommendations that might not always live up to my traveling standards. And that's what I got.

I still give this book 4 stars because it does a great job of suggesting inexpensive places, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for! For the record, I generally travel pretty cheaply and don't mind minimalistic accomodations as long as they are clean. These were generally that, but the bathrooms were often the downfall.

If you're 18-25, this is the perfect book. Many of the suggestions for accomodations and things to do are geared toward younger people who may not have as much money to spend.

If you're 26-40, this is a good book if you like to save money. When looking at accomodations, pay attention to the cost ratings (1-5) and you'll probably want to shoot for the 3-5 rating to get a place that's up to par and still inexpensive. For example, we stayed at the top recommended place in Sevilla and it was insanely cheap (15 euros per person), but the bathrooms were dismal and the showers so small you couldn't possibly bend over to get your shampoo. If you don't need to shower every night, then alternate your nights (1 or 2 star one night, 3 or 4 the next) as the rooms are often better than the bathrooms at the cheap places.

If you're 41-65, you may enjoy some of the places recommended. If you enjoy saving money and don't mind having small rooms and mediocre bathrooms, you'll save a ton and you can spend it on your food!

If you're over 65, I wouldn't recommend the book. The accomodations are almost all one or two stories above ground and few with elevators. They're often in the more bustling parts of town, which can mean noisier at night.

Fado in Lisbon
We took the book's recommendation for a Fado house in Lisbon, Cafe Luso, and while the book said that it was a minimum 20 euros, 22-29 euros per plate, we found it to be an extremely expensive night out. Granted, the music was wonderful, the ambience perfect, and we didn't worry about it too much because we'd saved so much on hotels. But all told it came to 160 euros for 4 people. They charged 8 euros per bottle of water and the food was so salty that we needed two. The wine, unlike any other place we went, was 25 euros. And the minimums were complicated and we felt like we'd been had when the bill came.

They had a 7 euro "couvert" that was required. This consisted of olives, cheese, a bun, and little sausage pieces. We had become accustomed to being charged for the olives and bread/cheese that were delivered to our table (this is customary throughout Portugal), so we tried to send them back. They kept bringing new things (bread, sausages) to our table and when I questioned it, they said, "no, no, you no pay." Oh, we paid. Whether we ate it or not, we would have paid as it was a required charge in addition to the 25 euro plate minimum.

So beware the Fado house. Luso was wonderful, but if you go, go for the drink option only. The music starts very late, so go out for dinner elsewhere and then pay 15 euros for the drink option versus buying dinner there.

Things to Do
The book has a nice system of listing things to do and places to see and they include nice brief writeups about these places. We found this to be very handy and helpful and generally hit the recommended places.

Food
We didn't use the food section very often, but when we did we found the recommendations were okay, but not great. The exception was Sintra. If you go to Sintra, you must go to the Sapa store for queijadas. Everything they sold was excellent and inexpensive.

Maps
The maps were excellent and we used them often for getting us into town before we had a tourist office map to get around with. In several cases, the map in the book was better than the tourist office map. I only wish they had parking indicated on them. We were often driving into towns where we wanted to park on the outskirts and then walk to find a place to stay.

One Recommendation
Photocopy the maps. I found them to be very useful, but carting around and using the massive book was not. So if I did it again, I would definitely photocopy (and enlarge when possible) all of the maps for cities I knew I'd be visiting.

Enjoy your trip!

Like many independent budget travelers, I have usually depended on Lonely Planet guidebooks for advice. But with that company's decision to focus more on a middle-class demographic and leave backpackers behind, I have been exploring other guidebook lines. In preparing for a transit through Spain in the course of hitchhiking from Germany to Senegal, I checked out the 2007 Spain guidebook by Cambridge, MA outfit Let's Go. I was very disappointed.

Some flaws of the guidebook are likely found throughout the Let's Go line. What first offends the reader are the advertisements spread all throughout the book. While looking for travel guidance, one must avoid sales pitches for mobile phones, ISIC cards, and hostel-booking websites. The publisher claims that placement of advertisements is done by a separate agency, and the writers do not endorse or get kickbacks from these companies, but it makes the whole production look amateur and unreliable.

I was hoping that Let's Go might show travelers the new, cheaper ways to travel that have come with the rise of certain Internet communities. Indeed, Let's Go is the only guidebook that mentions hospitality clubs. But here, they inexplicably recommend a hospitablity club that is moribund, GlobalFreeloaders, instead of suggesting the easy combination of HospitalityClub and Couchsurfing. Hitchhiking is getting easier than ever thanks to Internet compendia of tips on places to stand and signs to hold, but Let's Go doesn't mention any of that. In fact, the section on Hitchhiking is several paragraphs of "It's dangerous, don't do it", which at least in the European Union, of which Spain is a part, is irresponsible hyperbole. Lonely Planet, at least, gives a standard boilerplate "We don't recommend hitchhiking" before giving some general local guidance.

The travel direction that Let's Go give seems concerned mainly with boozing instead of any real contact with local culture. Throughout hostels, those impersonal spaces where one only encounters other foreigners, are listed as ideal places to stay in a given community. The company claims that their charter allows them only to employ current Harvard students, which means that the writers are not the sort of "travel as lifestyle" gurus I would prefer to get guidance from, but rather people who undoubtedly visited these places for short-term relaxation.

In terms of matters specific to Spain, I found that the information here is nowhere near as detailed as in the 2007 guidebooks by Lonely Planet and the Rough Guides. Both include information on how to enter Morocco from Algeciras, for example, while the Let's Go does not. While the Canary Islands are covered, Spain's possessions in North Africa are not. All in all, get the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide. Both of those lines are no longer focusing only on the budget travel, but are still more useful for a sincere and curious traveler than Let's Go.

...and I used this guide both times. Incredible amounts of information for the budget traveler. I especially appreciate how accurate everything is. The food recommends are great, too.

Basically, of the guides I have used before, this is the best for somebody on a budget. Also, this guide seems the best for anybody traveling alone.

Whenever you would want to travel on "a shoestring" consider this guide. It gives some great suggestions for things to see, places to stay and nice restaurants. All this information is presented in a structured and clear way. Let's go is not afraid to express their own opinion without being biased. It is also great read if you want get some background on Spain and Portugal.

The big question at hand of course is if it beats the Lonely Planet and other budget guides. I feel this is something of personal preference. The information in the guide is not that different from one of the other guides but the way they structure it is different. An advantage of the Let's go is that it seems to somewhat less popular than the Lonely Planet.
Therefore you run less of a risk that this "special place" that is mentioned somewhere in the guide is crowded with other travelers that bought the same guide.

From March till May of 2005 i have been cruising all of Portugal and south of Spain ( andaluzia ). I have accidentally bought this book in amazon by reading a negative review on Lonely planet - and all i can say is that this book is worth every cent of its price.
If you are not budget traveler - this books is not for you, but if you want to save money, and see the best of Portugal and Spain - it's definitely for you.
I and my friends have found lots of good accommodations for the very low price, we've seen thing that Lets go recommended, and we went to the lots of places. This book save me lots of money and helped to explore those two beautiful countries.
Of course some prices ar higher than they say, but that doesn't go beyond 1-5 euros.
And as they say - not all information should bu trusted 100 % - some thing change in a short time.
So, if you are a independent traveler ( or perhaps a student like me ) and want to see the best of Spain on Portugal, saving as much as you can - this book is definitely for you

Our son last summer toured Europe. He took 3 tour books along on his backpacking vacation. He discarded 2 of the other tour books and only kept-- Let's Go tour books. This summer he will be going to England and Spain and the only book he wanted was this tour book. By the way he is 32 years old and an engineer and wishes to try other countries but again only with Let's Go. REMEMBER Make sure the book is the year that you go.

Enjoy!

If you've got a good job, a generous salary and only a week, choose one of the many travel guides targeted at a more mid-level to luxury traveler - Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, Frommers, etc. If you're a student with time but no money, Let's Go is the only choice, at least for Spain.

I spent a month in Spain using exclusively an earlier version of this book in 2002. My budget was $15 a day, including EVERYTHING. Thanks to Let's Go, this was doable. (Yes, it's been a while, but I ran across the most recent version of this book and was thumbing through it and decided to write a review.) While travelling elsewhere shortly before arriving in Spain I realized that the coastal route we'd planned on taking wasn't feasible because all cheap accommodation was booked up. I had to entirely replan the trip without access to internet or other books - just Let's Go. Thanks to Let's Go, re-planning was a breeze.

Here's what I loved about Let's Go:

1.) Travel information up front, right at the start. That's the most important thing. Once you get to a town, you'll be able to do your own exploring, but getting there is the first challenge. Spain doesn't have France's super-efficient transportation network, so if you're going outside the major cities, having the detailed information right there, including all bus and train times to every city from the location in question is extremely handy. I have found myself hunting for this information in guides like Lonely Planet when planning for other vacations.

2.) Great accommodation information. The accommodation information is great if you're pinching pennies. The pensiones they list might not be super luxurious, but they're as cheap as it gets. Every place I stayed was listed in Let's Go, typically the cheapest available in most towns. My experiences were mixed, but Let's Go gave me a great preview of what I was getting myself into, and having the phone numbers was invaluable. Other guides will have lots of information on accommodation way out of the budget traveler's price range.

3.) Opinionated commentary and thumbs up recommendations. There's a lot to see in Spain. You don't have time to see everything, so I wanted a guide book that would help me choose. In general, Let's Go's recommendations were spot on. In particular, I find this an improvement over Rough Guide, which has tons of information, but it's very difficult to sift through due to lack of opinionated commentary.

4.) Maps at the beginning of each section. When you first arrive in a town, the first order of business is to find either the tourist information center or your accommodation. Regardless, for almost every town we went to and pension we stayed in, the maps and directions provided in Let's Go directed us to our destination without any trouble. This was invaluable. Once you find tourist information, you usually can get a larger more complete map, but until then, the Let's Go maps and information are critical. We found the maps very accurate and readable overall.

What I didn't like as much:

1.) Prices had gone up over what was listed in the book, despite having been published only a year ago. That's not really Let's Go's fault, but it was annoying. Places listed in Let's Go immediately get a lot of business, and many of them immediately raise there prices. If it got a "thumbs up," it's price has probably gone up since they listed it.

Another note - you're obviously not the only one reading Let's Go. However, this is a thick book and if you get out of Barcelona and Seville, there are plenty of attractions in this book where you're unlikely to see another young tourist other than yourself.

As long as I'm on the subject, here were some of off-the-path favorites from Spain:

1.) Morella - wow, what a crazy town. Beautiful views, probably the coolest castle I saw in Spain, and definitely off the tourist path. There used to be a "thumb's up" pensione referenced in Let's Go that we enjoyed.

2.) Merida - if you can't make it to Italy, this is a fantastic place to see ruins. Wow. A bit hot in the middle of July, though.

3.) Arcos de la Ventura - one of the whitewashed towns. Just an interesting spot to spend some time in.

The only place I'd skip for sure if I went back is Girona, which was kind of dirty, and I got robbed.

We bought this book and the information was very useful. We especially found the information on transportation and lodging to be helpful. The book lists plenty of restaurants too. There was so much to see and do on our trip and this book really helped us plan out a wonderful vacation. There is a lot of information on some of the smaller towns in Andalusia and elsewhere. All were amazing. All in all it's a very helpful book and worth the purchase.

I used this guidebook while touring Spain and Portugal. It was full of good information on places to visit and places to stay. The directions were easy to follow and I found their reviews of the places I stayed to be accurate. A word of caution - the Lisbon bus depot has relocated since this book was published - check with the tourist office for up to date info.

I bought this book because I had a class assignment but I also bought it because when I lived in Spain years ago, I actually used an older version to get me by.

The Let's Go Series is so amazingly on point in Europe which is the only place I'ver tried it so far (Germany, Spain, France, etc)

I'll be using it next in Brazil. It's so much more in depth and accurate and enjoyable than most of the other travel guides.

If you're going anywhere in the world, definitely pick up one of the Let's Go series