The Rough Guide to Europe

The rough guide to europe is OK. I would agree with other opinions which say its not the best of its kind - but in my opinion its probably the second best. Its gotta be a hard job - to squeeze all of europe into one book and then keep it up to date. But we backpacked using this book extensively to find accommodation and information about sights and to be honest it rarely let us down. My biggest problem with this guide is that the maps arent all that hot and it is hard in places to find decent town maps elsewhere. I reckon youd be a bit dumb to travel without a similar style of book - theyre great for those late night / early morning arrivals somewhere when ...

This chunky book resembles a Bible in size, but I'm afraid it didn't quite reach biblical standards for me on my interrailing trip around Europe. Handy, yes... pretty pictures, yes... but it gets a definite "could do better". One of the main problems we found was that it gives the street names of all sorts of important places (e.g. youth hostels, campsites etc.), but the maps it provides are not detailed enough to include most of these streets! Thus you can end up getting terribly lost if you can't find a public map. It also tends to give distances in terms of how long it takes by bus, metro etc- which means nothing to those determined ...