Thanks for that review. I was in fact thinking to provision myself with a guidebook. I had a nice discussion with swill today about it. Do you think it is better to go with the big Europe one or only the country guidebooks (ie in my case, germany-spain and italy) ? What about the Rough Guides?

Weight becomes an issue when toting too many guidebooks. Since you’d need at least 3 one-country guides, I’d go for a guide to Western Europe. I sometimes buy a guidebook for a city, region or country after I’m in Europe — they make good souvenirs and English editions are readily available. They generally have lots of pictures which helps with identifying all the photos I take.

My favorite general guide is Let’s Go but that’s largely because I think the Let’s Go guides are much more “current” in their description of transportation, social and cultural issues in Eastern Europe. For Western Europe, I’d probably go with Lonely Planet (better maps) or Let’s Go (better info, IMO for the budget traveler).

I bought myself a copy of “Let’s Go Europe” early this year to start planning my europe adventure, because I thought I would be going all over. However, it looks like I will be sticking with western europe on this trip. Does anyone know if the “Let’s go Western Europe” has more in depth information for the countries? Or is it the same info, just in a smaller book since there are less countries?

Fgreaudult, I like Rough Guide. For awhile I was even a convert to RG.
But RG can be a bit dry; I’ve gone back to Let’s Go. I do use some of Lonely Planet’s smaller pocketbook guides.
Nbetz, I am guessing that the Western Europe Let’s Go probably does have a bit more in depth info. But that’s just a guess.
For this last trip, we were only in France, and that was the Let’s Go we were using.