The Rough Guide to Portugal (Travel Guide)

Book is fine but did not arrive on time. I did the 3 day shipping and came in 6 days, disappointing!

This is edition number 12 in the Rough Guide to Portugal series. Believe me, Rough Guide has this country down to the square inch. First, the country. Portugal was the most powerful country in the world in the 15th century, only to be eclipsed by Spain in the 16th, but that's not the point. The point is that after about a century of tremendous opulence, Portugal's fortune began to sink with its weak, superstitious monarchy. The Lisbon earthquake in the 18th century was the nail in the coffin, and by the 19th century, Portugal had become a European fringe state - a long forgotten backwater. So much the better for its truly remarkable preservation! Since Portugal essentially stopped in the 18th century, what you see today is essentially what was in place at that time. It's an absolute time warp. So many of Portugal's cities and towns are preserved in such pristine condition, it's impossible to list them all. UNESCO has recognized this fact by naming over 10 sites within the country to the ultimately prestigious World Heritage List. Want to see Renaissance Europe? Forget about expensive and absolutely overrun Italy. Portugal is the place. It has everything, culturally and geographically. Now, the book. The typical Rough Guide format works well with Portugal. Rough Guides concentrate resources around historical and cultural contexts, arranged geographically by region and city. Listings are selective, not comprehensive. Rough Guide authors seek out the hotels and restaurants that they believe offer something unique to the location. In this way, this edition really shines. Few glossy photographs are here, but there are words aplenty. It's like carrying the national history museum in your hand. Maps are simple and accurate. Contexts are concise enough to be practical, but comprehensive enough to be interesting. The literature section is especially good.

This guide includes inexpensive to moderate accommodation recommendations, excellent maps, comments on public transportation, and knowledgeable advice.

This review compares the Rough Guides Portugal (9th ed.) with Lonely Planet Portugal (2nd ed.).We just returned from 2.5 weeks in Portugal. This was our first trip to Portugal and we took and used extensively the Portugal books from Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. We didn't visit the Algarve or Alentejo, concentrating on Lisbon and north.Both books were good, but overall we preferred the Rough Guide book. It was better organized and more up to date. It's writing was more incisive, lively, and witty.Here are some details as I saw them:LP maps often covered a wider area and had more detail than the RG maps, but they were in smaller type and often difficult to read. On more than one occassion a cab driver pulled out his spectacles to read the LP map.Rough Guide had more up to date phone numbers. LP did not have the up to date area codes (the leading 0 has been changed to a 2). In addition, for many properties in the north they had a 5 digit phone number, when now they are all six. More disturbingly, they have no update on their website for either the corrected area code or phone numbers. In fact, there was no Portugal update to the guide at all. (I'm not talking of the 'unverified travelers' reports.)LP provided more detailed information about the nitty-gritty details of traveling, e.g., money, trains, internet access, etc.RG presented the towns around Aveiro better. It was through it that we learned of Sao Jacinto, Torreira, and so on. These were not indexed in LP. We didn't discover that LP had some information on them until much later because it was more hidden in the Aveiro section. Since we had already decided to not stay in Aveiro we didn't think to look there. Although they were also in the Aveiro section of RG, they had their own headings and were also indexed.Similarly, RG highlighted Belmonte in the mountains. This town was interesting in itself and also in that it now holds one of Portugal's largest remaining Jewish communities and its new synogogue. Jews had previously worshipped secretly in a town house until 1974, now replaced by the new building. (I'm writing this using a mouse pad I purchased at the Belmonte castle for $1.50 with images of columns from the Mosteiro da Batalha!)I also preferred RG's treatment of Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela and of Parque Natural de Montesinho.We used several recommendations for restaurants and accommodations from the books. Their batting averages were about the same: good but not great. One African dance club listed in both books was now a female stip place, as my wife discovered when seeing if the cab had taken us to the right address. (I was waiting in the cab.) I felt they were generally too generous in their evaluation of hotels and restaurants.Both books had several failings common to them and to other guide books that we've used.Nearly all the accommodations and restaurants are in tourist areas. We were fortunate to stay in Lisbon in a residential dis

I have been to Portugal countless times and just like the country itself, the Rough Guide to Portugal never ceases to amaze me. This book is the perfect guide - light enough to carry around in a purse and yet absolutely comprehensive. All regions of Portugal are covered, even small villages are described if they have something of interest. And the way places are described is what makes this book so good - the writing is so witty, so apt, that I find myself rereading sections just for the chuckle. The guide includes tons of maps, precise directions, prices for museums, transportation, hotels, restaurants. The directions are oriented towards non drivers - that is, if you are relying on public transportation or your own two feet to get you around Portugal, then this book is excellent. The recommendations are always right on target and I have always found the information to be accurate. There are no color photographs in my edition which doesn't detract at all from the book. However, the new edition does have some nice pictures.So, my advice to you dear reader is: Visit Portugal - and take your Rough Guide with you!