Portugal

by Regis St. Louis, Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Portugal

Catch a waft of cool air and a mournful song in Lisbon's labyrinthine Alfama Splash into the clear waters at the Algarve's pristine Praia da Arrifana Savor the silky texture and appealing sweetness of a late-bottled vintage port

In This Guide:

Four authors, 124 days on-the-ground research, 27 custard tarts Full-color chapters on Portugal's highlights and local tips and insights Dedicated activities chapter covering hiking, surfing and horse-riding Content updated daily: visit lonelyplanet.com

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Reference, Portugal, History, Guidebook

548 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Regis St Louis has contributed to more than one hundred Lonely Planet titles, covering destinations on six continents. He currently lives in New Orleans, USA.

Reviews

[Yoshkosh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Downloaded the e-book in advance of a trip around Porto and down to Lisbon. Different version to that shown, but then no other version on goodreads, and who reads a 2003 guide anyhow?

The e-book functionality/format is shockingly poor, the presentation cruddy, but the content even suffers. Reminisced with friends about the "Lonely planet:on a shoe string" days when the writers actually did their homework and found rare gems. Sure, if you had an old edition the restaurants and hotels would be tourist-tired, but with a fresh edition, the book did what it said on the lable. Not so anymore... the descriptions of homely, convivial restaurants were met by a reality of a michelen staresque (prices and snootyess included) reality, the charming residences gave the impression of product placement rather than value/quality based.

This guide series is rapidly reducing to a handy "itinerary and historical background" and is moving away from being up to date and useful.

[Sandra Vel · Rating 5 out of 5]

La guía de Portugal más vendida. Muy completa, informativa y útil.
Mis guías favoritas son de Lonely Planet.

[Marko Mravunac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sempre um prazer.

[Lisa Gobeil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je suis maintenant prête pour la tournée du Portugal. Première fois pour moi que j’achète un guide! J’ai adoré! Plutôt que d’éplucher les milles et un sites internet, tout y est au même endroit! J’ai lu chacune de ces pages, on ne peut être plus préparé!

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Planning a trip to Portugal! This is your book

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Lonely Planet books. They give a good combo of info on culture, accommodation, entertainment, food and landscape. I found this one middle of the road. It certainly did help me figure out how to spend my time or rather where to go in Portugal. It was mostly reliable.

We got some great hotel recommendations Chiado 16 (most beautiful and largest hotel bathroom I have ever seen) and Sea Me--fantastic seafood restaurant with amazing sushi and small plates of seafood with interesting flavors!

There were a few let downs regarding some restaurants/towns that just didn't measure up to the description in the book.

However, I hated the e-version of this book. It didn't allow me to scan thru it or flip back and forth easily. Sometimes in print is better. Also, the latter parts of the book wouldn't download properly. As a result, I read through a lot of it insteat of just using it as a resource. The maps are also really difficult to read on the online version I had that wouldn't blow up larger. Bah! Annoying. My complaints are more to the format of the book than the content.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated and pretty thorough travel guide from Lonely planet, including plenty of Portuguese history. This is another excellent guide book giving a flavour of the country, suggested itineraries, places to stay, things to see and a history of the country. I liked the section about the prehistoric sites.

[Alina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful, found a lot of nice places & advices in its pages

[Francesco Bonadiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solita guida Lonely, comoda e utile per la pianificazione e per avere delle conoscenze base su molte cose, ma necessario utilizzare altri strumenti per approfondire.

[Laurie Byro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like these books and the Rick Steves, I use both as a guide, and just read them when I am not sure if I want to put the effort in to travel there. I was a travel agent for 25 years, salaried, not commission, I think Conde Nast used to say Truth in Travel, and while I enjoy Rick Steves, sometimes, his hickish sort of mid western "oh so explore meet the people" is alarming and so is his penchant for hating cruises. Hey, they are not what they used to be, VERY active for families now, and so to ME it saves so much time and energy not to be hopping trains, or godhelpusall and the people on the round abouts, driving in places that are too fast and unfamiliar. THAT to me is scary, but a cruise gets you there, and you unpack once and I do agree with Rick if you find a place (we love Nice and Barcelona) you stay put and trains and tours if you can. Much more satisfying to see less and explore that area as a home base. BUT I enjoy the quirky Lonely Planets as I did this one, and even Frommer and Fodor are great guides

[A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was surprised and dismayed by how poor this LP guide was. I felt like the history and attraction details were heavily skimped (if sites included at all!) in favor of a flashy and attractive interior (if I wanted that, I would buy a DK guide), and most of the content felt focused on "here's how to party in Lisbon." As a traveling family, looking for cultural education, this was all but useless to me.

[Darryl Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Lonely Planet series has been an incredible source of knowledge for us as we travel to countries that we have never visited before. The information is reliable, up-to-date, and insightful. When we were in Portugal, we used this guide alone to plan a two-week vacation. It was particularly helpful with the information about Sintra. You can see how useful it was as I highlighted the best of our stay there: https://sdfoodiefan.com/taking-a-day-...

[George Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always with LP guidebooks, they are the most comprehensive travel books you can buy, almost too much information though. I’d like to see them a bit more condensed, and easier to scan through, and to find key topics, as they are formatted more like an encyclopedia. Great information though for sure. They are still the golden standard in travel books.

[Iamisleen]

Excellent Book

I traveled to Portugal a few years ago. I recommend this book before traveling to Portugal. Great insights of Portugal compare what you will find online blogs or on the web.

[Judy Winton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always a good travel book - Lonely Planet

[JC Cornell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Lonely Planet travel books. Great way to work out the not to miss sights before deep diving the internet.

[Chrissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great historical sections along with vital info for the independent traveller

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maps maps maps. Big, beautiful, and in color!

[Delaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared to the eyewitness travel guide i read for Amsterdam this book was a dream. However the guide lacked the in-depth explorations of cities other than Lisbon

3.5

[George Borchert · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023 . Good discussion re: age of discoveries and avoiding discussion of slave trade in Portugal

[Marilyn]

I bought the 2014 version for $0.50 at the SOKC Lib on 24 March 2025

[Jen Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid travel book. Glad they did a section on tourism impacts for the country. Wish it had more areas, but overall it was good.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update after actual travel: My initial opinion is unchanged - this book has some useful information that is not in the Rick Steves guide, but overall I think Steves is slightly better (but the difference is marginal, so if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription I think you should just use this book, and I don't think anyone needs both). The information in this book is fairly current, but the costs data, given the sky high inflation of the last couple of years, is out of date.


This is a review of the Kindle edition, which is dated 2019.

I'm using this book (which I'm reading using a free trial of Kindle Unlimited) to draw up a rough itinerary for an extended trip, I will buy the Rick Steves guide before I start making bookings - in my experience Steves is generally better than LP, but he's highly opinionated and he only covers things he's interested in, so it's good to consult a 2nd guidebook, particularly for a long trip. This book is very thorough, covering a wide variety of destinations, and of attractions in each destination - so, given the above, I'm satisfied with it.

The formatting of the Kindle edition isn't great (some sections are simply unformatted, though this is less of a problem than in LP Spain, which is dated 2018 - hopefully this means LP editors are learning how to create a Kindle version properly!), which makes the book hard to follow, as well as looking ugly. The links to Google Maps would be awesome if they worked properly, but often they don't (they often take you to the lat-long, rather than to the pin for the actual attraction). The links to websites do work and are very handy. The search function is very handy too. Kindle is the sensible way to carry a guidebook (who wants to lug a huge brick around the world?), so it's really sad that there are many kinks in this Kindle edition.

As I always do when reviewing travel guides, I'll update this review after I travel (which probably won't be until 2023).

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provided (overall) great information for the cities I visited (Lisbon, Porto, Lagos, and Sintra). Has some nice photos of places to see, a couple of which convinced me to see some things I wouldn't have otherwise (and I'm glad I did!)

Minus a star because of some inaccuracies; granted they were relatively minor but given that this edition just came out a few months ago (March 2007), it's hard to overlook. Some of the maps could have been more comprehensive and tended to not display some alleys which got me lost a couple of times. And their "pick" for restaurants more often than not tended to be relatively expensive places...it'd be better if they had a "pick" in each category (budget, moderate, expensive). Having said that, the times I went to their "picks," the food was excellent.

[Jennifer]

I skittered through this, partly due to time (someone else was evidently fondly imagining they were going to get to Portugal too and the library wanted it back) but mostly because it didn't seem to offer me what I had expected and hoped. I wasn't using it to decide where to go in Portugal, that's determined for me, but I did want to read more about that area of the Algarve and I did want to read general information a traveller would need to know, and I just didn't feel there was enough there, either about the area or general information - for example there was almost nothing about how to negotiate eating out in Portugal as a vegetarian. The edition is sufficiently new that I would have expected a lot more about how to manage as a vegan let alone my own diet.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think we purchased or checked out every available travel guide for our 3-week Portugal journey this summer. This was the best by far! A lot of variety in places to stay and eat, and the travel itineraries were well-crafted. I feel lucky that we relied on this so much because we ended up making great friends with a group of Italians who were likewise relying on their Italian Lonely Planet Portugal. We ran into them by accident on several occasions and always at wonderful places the book had guided us to...

[Sabine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het leuke van het lezen van een Lonely Planet is, naast voorpret voor je vakantie, dat je weer heel veel leert. Dingen waarvan je vindt dat je het eigenlijk had moeten weten. Maar toch wist je het niet! Ik had bijvoorbeeld geen idee dat Portugal een dictator heeft gehad, net als Spanje dus. En dat het kiesrecht voor vrouwen pas in 1975 (!!!) is ingeregeld is al helemaal absurd. Dus; weer wat wijzer geworden, en binnenkort op vakantie. :)

[Freya · Rating 3 out of 5]

We have been using this guide on our travel through southern Portugal. It has given us good advice on what sights to visit. However, we missed explanations on the sights we visited. At times, there was no background information to the major sights. That was a bit disappointing. So good guide to show you where to go, but also a guide that does not give you information about what you are seeing when you get there.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for reading on the toilet , maps come in handy ( if you rip them out so you don't look like a dork ) . Everything else a bit dated and gimpy, never have any good drinking advice , all bloody museums and churches.

[Jolianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

they really know all the secret spots and their recommendations sound amazing. I love that they are not afraid to voice an opinion - even a negative one. this is my 7th time going to Portugal but now I am excited to discover it all over again.