What's the best European traveling book?

[Syringer]

I've heard good things about Rick Steves and the Lonely Planet series. Any recommendations?

 

[axelfox]

I vote for Lonely Planet. I use them exclusively for my international traveling needs.

 

[Ketteringo]

Frommers?

 

[TheChort]

one more vote for lonely planet
My suggestion is think about your priorities for your trip. Then go to a book store and just check out all the books your considering. Look up all the sections you are most interested in. Some books put more emphasis on night life, and others like to focus on museums and tours.

 

[dr150]

lonely planet and lets' go have the best mix of cheap dining and hotels/hostels and well written recommendations (I'm especially fond of lets'go). in second place I'd get rough guides. One of these should be definite gets on any trip.

DK books and insight guides (published by discovery) and knopf are great for their pictures and thus give a good snapshot of what you'll see.

frommer's and fodors are the big company books and have hotels/restaurants that are markedly more expensive than what young under 30 people would consider. both are worth skipping for the aforementioned. still, go to their websites and copy their nuggets.

rick steve's is too general and seltively opinionated...but has nuggets. it's worth copying down at a book store rick's recommendations for hotels and restaurants.....still, all in all, a good tier down from the other books overall.


<------Has dozens upon dozens of travel guides of all flavors on the bookshelf.

 

[screw3d]

Rough Guides are pretty good too. The problem with Lonely Planet is that every tourist has it, and the places that they recommend are almost always fully booked

 

[DaWhim]

i have some from frommers, got it off newsgroups. they are 2004 tho.

 

[Colt45]

im too hardcore for a guide book

 

[Jzero]

Rick Steve's Europe Through The Back Door is a great sort of navigational aid. It's not a guidebook so much as a textbook on how to plan and execute your trip.

 

[Mill]

I used Frommers. It depends on if you are going to go hostel and cheap or splurge.

 

[TheWart]

I am not sure what kind of budget you are on, but I was in France last semester as a student in college, and hand down the best series is the "Let's Go" set of books.

They were indespensible to us, and they never let us down (be it in terms of hotels/hostels, restaurants, etc). They are very well organized, and have books for each country, or a book which covers Western Europe, etc.

They are so good because the people who write them (actually a number of people collaborate on each book/country) are students like us who travel around looking for the best deals and out of the way places. We actually ran into this guy from Harvard on a train in Marseille who used to work for Let's Go. He got paid to travel around Amsterdam...of course he had to "work his way" up the ladder (they don't send you off to a place like that for your first assignment).

EDIT:

Here is the link for their latest book on Europe...we tended to use the country-specific books, but if you are travelling to a whole bunch, then this would be a lot easier to caryy around (not to mention cheaper).

Hope this helps!