John's Photo Gallery-- Amazon.com Suggested Travel Books.

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Book Title	Comments
Rick Steve's Portugal 07	Rick Steves lives up to his detailed, easy to use guide books with Portugal 2006. Rick Steves' provides you with a list of the best and cheapest places to stay including up to date prices, addresses and phone numbers. He also provides a good synopsis of what the worth while sites are as well as a quick history of the sites. The book also provides a list of recommended restaurants and connections in between cities.   Steves also provides you with a knowable and historical commentary of the sites. I find this very useful because I have a one stop reference book to know what I am looking at and what the historical and cultural significance of it is. What's best about this guide book is its a pocket sized book so you can just carry it around with you at pleasure instead of lugging around a heavy megaguide book that skimps on details. I used his guidebook in 1999 when I went through Portugal and I found it invaluable. Portugal 2006 has been expanded and is vastly superior to the book I found I could not be without.
Michelin Green Guide: Portugal	The Michelin Green Guide series provides tourist information as well as mini tours for just about every tourist attraction that you can think of in in Portugal. Very useful if you want to set out on your own and find the romantic, hole in the wall places that other guide books ignore. Also provides maps and a fairly accurate rating system of the sites. I enjoy the detailed descriptions of towns and areas that it has as well as the detailed mini tours it contains for most sites. It also rates how the worth while the sites are to travel off to.
The Lonely Planet: Portugal	The lonely planet combines history and culture with complete hotel and restaurant listings for cities all over Portugal. I have met some of their writers and they are very in their search for the best places to stay and eat.
The Rough Guide: Portugal	This is a comprehensive guide book of cities in Portugal. Has accommodations listings and city information for just about any city in Portugal you can think of including prices. It also gives museum listings as well as crude maps of large cities.The Rough Guide also gives you a brief introduction to Portuguese culture and what to look out for. Unfortunately though it gives the prices for Hotels, it does not go into the quality of them. I tend to like the Rough guide more than the Lonely Planet. One is published in Australia (Lonely Planet) the other in England (the Rough Guide). I've heard that others agree but check them both out.
Guide Books for Spain Below are my two favorite books for Spain. For a more complete listing of portugal guide books, please see my guidebook page forSpain.
Rick Steve's Spain 06	Rick Steves has detailed easy to use guide books. Rick Steves' provides you with a list of the best and cheapest places to stay including up to date prices, addresses and phone numbers. He also provides a good synopsis of what the worth while sites are as well as a quick history of the sites. The book also provides a list of recommended restaurants and connections in between cities.   Steves also gives you historical background on each city. His more recent books also include a history of the entire country (in this case Spain) which I also find useful because I know in what context something is important. I've used his books on all my trips except Greece (which he doesn't publish)
Michelin Green Guide: Spain	The Green Guide for Spain ofers alphabetical listing of any city you would even consider visiting. Furthermore it provides insightful history of the cities. For major attractions and cities the guide provides mini tours and other helpful information. The Green guide has a very accurate rating system for its listing and provides decent maps of areas of interest. This one was updated in 2006 so it has all the latest information.
Other Guide Books These guide books seem popular but I have never read them so I can not give any feedback on them.
Let's Go Spain and Portugal	Many people find Let's Go to be a bit large and confusing (Note, it lumps Spain and Portugal together). However, it is written by students and it sells thousands of copies so I guess some people like it.
Lots of great pictures and maps for traveling in Portgual. I like the Eyewitness books so I have an idea of what I will be looking at before I go. I tend to leave this book at home and just use it as a reference
Eyewitness Lisbon	Again, useful for getting oriented with pictures.
Fodor's Portugal 2005	Fodor's book on Portugal.

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