Let's Go: Europe was the Travel Bible for me, a naive college student, taking three trips across Europe in the 1980s and early '90s, traveling mostly by Eurail and hitchhiking (and some some bike and moped rental). It had excellent advice on living cheaply, what to learn, and where to eat and sleep. In it, I discovered a whole-in-the-wall restaurant in Naples which had wonderful seafood pizza with tiny whole octopi and little squids. Delicious. On my 3rd visit there, 7 years after the first, I was travelling with my brother and his friends. The locals took great delight in watching the two of them eating spaghetti by (WARNING: gross misconduct) CUTTING up the noodles. They demonstrated the correct technique to them of winding the noodles onto the fork by twirling it on a spoon. Let's Go showed me all the best granita (Italian ice cream) shops in Firenze (Florence), little known but excellent historic sites, advice on crime and pickpocketing, what phrases to speak, time of year for travel, concerts to see (watching the sun go down in Sainte Chappelle in Paris, a cathedral with 360˚ of stained glass windows, to Vivaldi was amazing), what parks and train stations were safe for sleeping, etc., etc. My second trip (myself and a friend) was for 2 months and cost me $1,223 total; $21.09/day, including plane tickets. Hostels and Student Eurail were wonderful.
Today, the Internet has mostly replaced this wonderful advice source. When I travelled with my family to Paris last year (2023), I, as usual, packed this along, but I did not look into it once. This was partially because I knew Paris so well, but I also saw a few new sites: Musée du Quai Branley; Musée Cluny; La Galerie Dior; MAD... there's always more to see in Paris. Also, my wife is whole food plant-based (I be adapting Carnivore), so we ate at a lot of restaurants I had never been to. It's now "Internet to the Rescue!" instead of "Quick, open Let's Go!" Let's Go is still fun to read and plan in advance of the trip, but it will no longer be in my backpack. ( )

Flicking through my old "Let's Go Europe 1998" (used for a trip to Europe over the 1998/99 northern hemisphere winter), obviously rings back many memories; walks through Vienna's old town as snowflakes fluttered down, mountains so high my Australian brain just couldn't contend with them, the fact I was absolutely FREEZING the entire time and that I seemed to spend a goodly amount of time running around tourist attractions desperately looking for a public toilet.

I'm probably looking at this through rose coloured glasses, but I seem to recall my main complaint about "Let's Go Europe: 1998" was that they would give directions by points of the compass, which wasn't much use when you didn't have a compass; I lost count of the times I would read "go due west for a kilometre until you see the cheap hotel/local tourist site/bar selling cheap booze", have a wild guess at which direction west was and then lugged my incredibly heavy backpack a km or so until I realised that I must have picked the wrong direction. ( )

EASILY the best guidebook I've ever had. Is anything wrong with it? Well, it's a bit too into recommending dreary fucking techno bars - there are better places to drink, dance, AND pick up in this world than at 230 BM+PM with Carl Cox whinnying in your ear and some chavvy Yorkshireman spilling his pint of piss down yer back - but I know, I know, give the people what they want. And the history and context is lacking - obvs you need to go beyond your guide for that, but it'd be nice if they found a way to fit in a history/culture page on each country. Not that you can begrudge 'em much, because this book is a miracle of great information and form meeting function. Everything they suggested was awesome, possibly because not as many people read LG as Lonely Planet and so they're not effectively ruining a place by suggesting it to you. Always vegetarian options. An ingenious system of icons that represents absolute cheapness as well as relative value, and they aren't shy with suggesting things and making value judgments on one attraction or activity or hotel over another, unlike a lot of these guys who try to pay it cagey (for the ad dollars? Surely to fuck not). The travel and orientation information is simple, accurate, and doesn't assume you speak the language, which is fucking necessary. Best of all, the maps are accurate, easy to use, and don't contain any extraneous crap. And the book is cheap and printed on newsprint, so you don't feel bad slashing sections out of it and leaving the bulk behind. This book actually works in the line of a troubleshooting tool, and made my vacation better. Wouldn't it be nice if all guidebooks could boast the same? ( )