Portugal - Book

Portugal - Travel guide. Good for an overview

I used the Portugal travel book as a travel guide for my trip to Lisbon. When you want to travel to Lisbon and around I would recommend to buy a guide for Lisbon, because the guidebook for Portugal is not covering Lisbon in detail (In other guidebooks of the country I visited I felt, that the capital was covered better). I liked the overview, that the guidebook gave about Lisbon. Very nice that the guidebook did prepare us for some scams typical for the city. The new layout of the lonelyplanet guidebooks are very handy! I missed some information about markets and maybe a more collected place in the guide about nice food spots/ street food spots in Lisbon. In the next version there should be more included about Sintra - normally Lonely Planet gives a lot of information about major landmarks and this isn’t the case for Sintra at all in this book - I would say. Also the guide could have a better section on Portugal’s history. The old layout of Lonely planet had nice timelines and I am sad, this isn’t part of the new layout. To put it in a nutshell - this guide is good for an overview, but not really fulfilling, when Lisbon and the area around the capital is the only area of Portugal you want to visit.

A good update

My last Portugal guidebook was from 2019 so I decided to purchase the new edition released last March. As always, a guidebook with great content. I particularly like the walking maps which have been added for many cities. There are still a few things I would like to see: the location of the tourist information office in every city and for photographers the best time to take photos. For example, the entrance of a Cathedral might be best in the afternoon light if it is in the shade in the morning. Nowadays many, if not all, tourists have a camera or a camera phone and this would be very helpful. Adding best view points and best sunset points would also be good.

Get it timely!

I bought this guide one year ahead of my trip: worth going through it, looking for experiences, destinations, advices. I am sure it will serve even last minute changes to the plan I made. Get it timely! Lonely Planet is Lonely Planet, regardless of the destination!