Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Spain and Portugal 2004

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

 

 

As indicated in his book, the author does not try to pack anything and everything into his travel guide. Rather, he tries to winnow things out and focus on the important highlights of a particular country. That is why this book was so appealing to me. Other books are like heavy tomes that contain more facts and information than you need and are not likely to remember. I think Rick Steve's cuts to the chase. My only criticism of his book is that I found the restaurants he recommended to be uneven. Some of the restaurants were good and others were simply average at best. I felt that his other recommendations as to sights, entertainment and accomodations were very good.

If you have never been to Spain or Portugal before, I would highly recommend this book. If, however, you have been to Spain before or plan to spend several days in just a few cities, you should consider another travel guide that contains more detail.

This book would only be useful if I were travelling to Spain. And even the 3 days I spent there, not a single word was mentioned of Bilbao, Valladolid, and the northern Atlantic cities. Very dissappointing. The book reserves all of about 30 pages on Portugal, none of which provide nearly as insightful as the Lonely Planet or Michelin guides. My advice, save your money and buy something else.

Surprising for an RS travel book. I've used his books heavily in planning many a trip. His team usually does a nice job of providing a balanced view of a country or city. This one showed mostly the unpleasantness and mediocrity of Portugal. Can't speak for the Spain section, as I'm not considering travel to Spain in the short term, and did not review that as carefully.

My wife and I just spent 9 days driving down the coast of Spain from Barcelona to Denia and then north of Barcelona to Cadaques. Very few of the chapters were pertinent to the towns we visted on our trip. The map we purchased lacked detail and could be obtained free from inside of another tour book we purchased from Amazon.

i'm thrilled with the purchase of our first rick steves travel book. his website and tv shows are VERY informative and practical and this 2008 book on Spain does not disappoint. it's not too clunky to take with us on our travels - yet, for day trips, we're photocopying a few "walking tour" pages so we don't have to take the book with us when we're travelling lighter. ... while he doesn't highlight EVERY inch of spain, he surely hits all the highlights! NO complaints and we look forward to experiencing more of the world through his expertise!

Some thoughts about Mr. Steves' largely excellent book. Highly recommended.

Pros:

* Mr. Steves provides excellent help in prioritizing your time in Spain and Portugal. I find this activity to be the hardest when planning a trip. How many days in Barcelona, how many in Madrid, etc?

* An incredibly valuable feature of the book, in my opinion, is that Mr. Steves provides a one-page listing of the primary sites in each city, ranking each site from zero to three stars based on how important it is to see each site. While I may not agree on his prioritization, the page makes for a quick checklist while you're walking or waiting for public transportation.

* Mr. Steves is particularly good at recommending out-of-the-way lodging and restaurants that you might not otherwise find in a given place.

* Mr. Steves' book is also very good for budget travelers, providing lodging and dining in every class of service.

Cons:

* As mentioned in several other reviews, the book is laden with historical factual errors. I won't go into that here.

* In a cutesy manner, many of the maps are handwritten and the street names are omitted. Specifically, if you try to drive around Sevilla using only this book, you will live to regret it.

* Much if not most of the visitor information (hours and days of availability) for tourist sites is wrong. I strongly suggest doing what we did: arriving in a particular town the night before you wish to visit its sites, walking around to see the real hours displayed, then planning your itinerary over dinner.

Some other thoughts, not particularly specific to his book but useful for your trip:

* PORK: Spain is completely obsessed with pork. More or less every menu item has pork on it. Even if it says vegetarian and you ask if it's vegetarian and they assure you it's vegetarian, the odds are pretty high that it'll have a six ounce hunk-o-bacon in it. If you are committed not to eat pork for any reason, seriously consider whether it's worth having to cookies out of a bag for the duration of your trip.

* There are department stores called Corte Ingles scattered around every city in Spain. They have grocery stores and everything else you might need. Knowing where they are is very useful on a long trip.

Best of luck!
Lydia

This guidebook contains useful information for the places highlighted by the author. It's coverage of Spain, however, is limited to the author's specific itinerary. I would expect any guidebook that has "Spain" as it's title to at least provide cursory coverage of Valencia and the Costa Blanca region in eastern Spain. These areas are not even mentioned.

This is a great book that really highlights the important information about a trip to Spain and Portugal. Rick has selected some great places in the big cities and fantastic little places on the verge of being discovered. His section on Portugal's Algarve is especially great, leading you to hide-away places that will some day be overcrowded because of their beauty. [...]