I personally like Lonely Planets book. If you are planning on staying in Hostels and will try to find cheapest places to eat and party then its the book for you. It has loads of info about the best cities in each country including ones that are not well known.

Another vote here for Lonely Planet. I also bought Frommer’s Europe 2004 and it was only good for museums. It was a waste and LP ended up being my bible, Frommer didn’t even leave my house.

Either LP or Let’s Go are fine for backpackers. When I’m traveling alone, I actually prefer Let’s Go. I always felt that it had better descriptions of accomodations, and that was important to me when I was solo.

Fodors and Frommers aren’t geared toward backpackers.

Just don’t buy both of them as 90% of information is the same, especially in multi-country books.

Another vote for Lonely Planet. I did buy both and I found I barely even looked at the Let’s Go guide. I just prefered the format and everything else of Lonely Planet – and much of the info is the same in both, as already mentioned.

Sometimes the hotels/hostels in Lonely Planet are a little sketchy. I would recommend Let’s Go or Rough Guides.

Here’s a vote for Let’s go. I’ve had both, and Lets Go is superior.

I used Lonely Planet to navigate my way around the Alhambra in Granada Spain, and they were wrong about basically every thing.

My trips are always planned using Let’s Go. I recommend them to anyone.

Let’s Go.

I generally prefer Rough Guides. Never used Let’s Go (don’t think they’re available here), but Lonely Planet does tend to get a lot of things wrong.

Let’s Go (definitely for picking hostels).

Definetly Let’s Go. I don’t know why Lonely Planets seems to be so popular, or why it has so many more guides, but I found it very vague and not very useful. Let’s Go, all the way.

I love my shoestring book! It’s awesome
It gives you tons of tips on each city in europe, as well as surrounding cities!

I see that it is on Ebay for relatively cheep!

hey can someone tell me the exact name of the lonely planets book you all are talking about because I searched for lonely planets and like 20 books came up. I need a book that covers all of europe not just one country. I am a student backpacker

its called Lonely Planet: Europe on a shoestring.

For a specific city, Timeout is fantastic. Useful info, good maps and all that. The Tokyo book blows every other away, trying to get the HK one next!