1 comments about Karen Brown's Spain, 2007: Exceptional Places to Stay & Itineraries (Karen Brown's Spain Charming Inns & Itineraries).

1. Good review of places to stay but not too heavy on things to do or what to see. Then again I haven't been to Spain yet so this could be the best book ever.

3 comments about Let's Go 2007 Spain & Portugal (Let's Go Spain and Portugal).

1. This is the second Let's go buy, it's perfect to use in trips around the world...many traditionals and alternative tips, don't forget yours....



2. Our son last summer toured Europe. He took 3 tour books along on his backpacking vacation. He discarded 2 of the other tour books and only kept-- Let's Go tour books. This summer he will be going to England and Spain and the only book he wanted was this tour book. By the way he is 32 years old and an engineer and wishes to try other countries but again only with Let's Go. REMEMBER Make sure the book is the year that you go.
   
   Enjoy!



3. Like many independent budget travelers, I have usually depended on Lonely Planet guidebooks for advice. But with that company's decision to focus more on a middle-class demographic and leave backpackers behind, I have been exploring other guidebook lines. In preparing for a transit through Spain in the course of hitchhiking from Germany to Senegal, I checked out the 2007 Spain guidebook by Cambridge, MA outfit Let's Go. I was very disappointed.
   
   Some flaws of the guidebook are likely found throughout the Let's Go line. What first offends the reader are the advertisements spread all throughout the book. While looking for travel guidance, one must avoid sales pitches for mobile phones, ISIC cards, and hostel-booking websites. The publisher claims that placement of advertisements is done by a separate agency, and the writers do not endorse or get kickbacks from these companies, but it makes the whole production look amateur and unreliable.
   
   I was hoping that Let's Go might show travelers the new, cheaper ways to travel that have come with the rise of certain Internet communities. Indeed, Let's Go is the only guidebook that mentions hospitality clubs. But here, they inexplicably recommend a hospitablity club that is moribund, GlobalFreeloaders, instead of suggesting the easy combination of HospitalityClub and Couchsurfing. Hitchhiking is getting easier than ever thanks to Internet compendia of tips on places to stand and signs to hold, but Let's Go doesn't mention any of that. In fact, the section on Hitchhiking is several paragraphs of "It's dangerous, don't do it", which at least in the European Union, of which Spain is a part, is irresponsible hyperbole. Lonely Planet, at least, gives a standard boilerplate "We don't recommend hitchhiking" before giving some general local guidance.
   
   The travel direction that Let's Go give seems concerned mainly with boozing instead of any real contact with local culture. Throughout hostels, those impersonal spaces where one only encounters other foreigners, are listed as ideal places to stay in a given community. The company claims that their charter allows them only to employ current Harvard students, which means that the writers are not the sort of "travel as lifestyle" gurus I would prefer to get guidance from, but rather people who undoubtedly visited these places for short-term relaxation.
   
   In terms of matters specific to Spain, I found that the information here is nowhere near as detailed as in the 2007 guidebooks by Lonely Planet and the Rough Guides. Both include information on how to enter Morocco from Algeciras, for example, while the Let's Go does not. While the Canary Islands are covered, Spain's possessions in North Africa are not. All in all, get the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide. Both of those lines are no longer focusing only on the budget travel, but are still more useful for a sincere and curious traveler than Let's Go.

No comments about Mallorca & Menorca Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs).

No comments about Travellers Andalucia including Seville, 2nd (Travellers - Thomas Cook).

No comments about Frommer's Comprehensive Travel Guide Madrid & the Costa Del Sol (Frommer's Madrid and Costa Del Sol).

1 comments about A Traveller's Companion To Madrid (Traveller's Companion).

1. Madrid was founded by the Moors and only rose to prominence in the 16th century when King Philip II chose to make it Spain's first permanent court and the center from which he would manage his newly emancipated empire. But it was not until two centuries later that Madrid would become the grandly aristocratic city that it is today. Historian Hugh Thomas has researched five centuries of Madrid's history as recorded in diaries, letters, memoirs, and even novels. The result is an outstanding anthology which vividly evokes the drama and personalities of the past with eyewitness accounts and commentaries from both visitors and inhabitants of Spain's premier city. Enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone planning a vacation trip or a business visit to Madrid, A Traveller's Companion To Madrid is informed and informative -- and would well serve as a template for how other historians might create histories of their cities both in Europe and in the United States.

4 comments about The Rough Guide to Ibiza & Formentera.

1. As a travel guide, this book succeeds on a superficial level but fails to deliver the "real" knowledge that a traveler to Ibiza seeks. I'd like to insert a caveat here and say that much of the info that an Ibiza traveler is looking for is probably not something that any author in their right mind would put in a book. this book is mostly filled with info on how to book a flight, find a hotel, commute to the clubs or beaches, and where to eat. Great, if you are traveling to the Grand Canyon, or Great Wall of China but I doubt people go Ibiza to do the "tourist" thing. The book did touch on some wild incidents that were reputed to have occurred in the past causing my imagination to run wild. But overall, the book is very basic. I wish the "Let's Go" series would publish a book on Ibiza. They always put in what you want to know.



2. This guide was excellent, and extremely comprehensive. We went to Ibiza in Sept 2001 for the clubs' closing parties, but managed to hire out a car for a three days and explored the island. You've got to get to Atlantis, an amazingo quarry with weird hippy carving and to some of the beaches in the north. The restaurants recommended in the RG were also very well chosen - check out Bambuddha Grove for Thai food...mmmmm...



3. If you like this book about Ibiza, take a look to one of the following links: http://www.balearicpictures.net http://www.mallorcapictures.com http://www.menorcapictures.com http://www.ibizapictures.net http://balearicpictures.net http://mallorcapictures.com http://menorcapictures.com http://ibizapictures.net



4. Descriptions are detailed and basically accurate. However, this edition is 3 years old and getting out of date, especially for the club information (Pacha is really past it, for instance). Could use some more photos. Overall, I got my money's worth -- the physical info and rating of beaches etc is essentially excellent. Also, it turned me on to some of Ibiza's history, such as Elliot Paul's Life and Death of a Spanish Town. I only spotted one outright mistake: There is NO beach at Cala D'Aubaurca, although the cliffs there are really spectacular and well worth a vist -- and there will be no one else there.

3 comments about The Life and Death of a Spanish Town.

1. When this autobiographical account was published in the late 30's it was an immediate sensation. Though Elliot Paul is pretty well forgotten today, he was the author of many best sellers. The Life and Death of a Spanish Town is generally regarded as his masterpiece. In this all but forgotten book Paul describes the destruction of the idyllic life he led on the Ballearic Island of Ibiza by the Fascists, both Italian and Spanish, who struck out against the Spanish Republic in 1936. It has long been considered one of the classics of the Spanish Civil War.



2. When this autobiographical account was published in the late 30's it was an immediate sensation. Though Elliot Paul is pretty well forgotten today, he was the author of many best sellers. The Life and Death of a Spanish Town is generally regarded as his masterpiece. In this all but forgotten book Paul describes the destruction of the idyllic life he led on the Ballearic Island of Ibiza by the Fascists, both Italian and Spanish, who struck out against the Spanish Republic in 1936. It has long been considered one of the classics of the Spanish Civil War.



3. The Spanish town of the title is Santa Eulalia Del Rio, known to its inhabitants simply as Santa Eulalia. Elliot (correct spelling) Paul made Santa Eulalia, a small fishing village on the Spanish island of Ibiza, his home from 1931 to 1936. He did not live there as an outsider, but rather as an accepted and loved member of the community.

   During Paul's first few years on Ibiza, life seemed idyllic. Most of his friends and neighbors were simple, somewhat naive, generally kind people who ranged from those who struggled to eke out a living to those comfortably well off. If the rich preferred to stay that way and weren't too anxious to share the wealth, so be it. If the Communists thought the wealth should be spread around, that seemed to be normal for your everyday Communist. If the Republicans liked the old style government and the Fascists thought that they should be in control, as long as it was just a thought, it didn't hurt anyone, did it? In spite of these conflicting agendas, all seemed well and no one thought that the problems on the mainland would spill over to their little island.

   Paul brings Santa Eulalia to life. He introduces us to the leading citizens in each walk of life, and invests them with real personalities. No wooden characters here. Paul's genius is in making us feel that we know everyone and that we are participants in the life of Santa Eulalia.

   He immerses himself deeply into the life of the village, and, it is my opinion that if not for the hostilities of the Spanish Civil war, Paul and his family would never have left Santa Eulalia. As it was, they waited until the last possible minute to escape, fleeing to the last neutral ship to dock in the harbor minutes before it left. At the time he wrote this book, Paul was still suffering from feelings of guilt over having survived when so many of his friends didn't.

   With the coming of the Spanish Civil War, Ibiza was alternately ruled by Fascists, Loyalists, Communists, and whatever other ist's could wrest control. Each successive change of power was accompanied by new oppressions, imprisonments and executions. The true victims of all of this were the innocent majority who naively believed that they could continue their old ways of life no matter who was in power.

   The day after Paul and his family made their escape there was an invasion by Italian Fascist troops. Within a few hours these troops herded most of the remaining males into a town square and machine gunned them. The Italians didn't care whose side the men were on, they considered all of the islanders to be a threat and thus executed all the males they could find, no questions asked. A day or two later, Spanish government planes bombarded Santa Eulalia, destroying nearly every home in the village. At the time of the publication of this book in 1937, Paul was still unable to determine the fate of any of his friends.

   THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SPANISH TOWN brings a community to life, presents its inhabitants as real living people, and eventually brings home the horror of war through the deaths of innocent people with real names, families, and feelings. An out of print book that merits reprinting.

No comments about Basque Regions of Spain & France: of Spain and France, a countryside guide (The 'landscapes" /Sunflower Guides) (The 'landscapes" /Sunflower Guides).

No comments about Algarve Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs).