10 Best Travel Books For Europe (2023 Updated)

Great book for people who enjoy weekends away and city breaks. Lists the destinations by country, but also by the type of break that destination is best for e. g. adventure, food lovers, cafe culture etc.

Love it.

A great book with lots of ideas and beautiful pictures! I especially love the “Where to go if you like…” page; suggesting lots of destinations for different likes/hobbies. It made a great gift.

This is a great book which I bought for a gift for my partner. It looks lovely so we have it out on display on our coffee table, and it’s content is full of unique and exciting places we wouldn’t have thought of to visit.

We can’t wait to go to them all!.

I bought this travel guide to plan my next trip to beautiful Italy. I don’t know when that will be (due to COVID) but I am very hopeful this will happen sooner rather than later. So far I have learnt a lot & find it very hard to put down.

It’s extremely informative & has given me a few wonderful ideas about where to explore. Thanks Booktopia & Lonely Planet – two greats I can rely on!.

Purchased this to convince the family the Canada holiday we had been dreaming of was possible. This book contains planned trips for a variety of budgets and little highlights for different regions. Would recommend for anyone planning a trip to Canada.

I found this guide to have great content. but the layout is so difficult to read and you loose concentration very quickly trying to find information. so it’s blessed with knowledge and difficult to use!.

This book covers it all! My wife and I are planning a trip to Italy next month. It’s a self guided tour throughout northern Italy and this book has provided not only the ‘main attractions’ but also many additional pieces of information (e.

g. location of WC’s, local spots, markets, a cost range of restaurants, out of the way must see’s, etc. ) This book was all I was in search of and MORE! I would definitely recommend any of Steve’s books.

He covers it all! I really love the portion of the front part of the book where he instructs you to “Tear the book up”. By this he means ripping out the portions for the respective cities/locations and just take this along instead of the entire book.

Only a ‘real traveler’ would instruct you to do something as this! Love it!.

This was an engagement gift for my son and his fiance. They LOVE it. They hope to travel to Italy when it is safe and this is making the planning so much easier. Half the fun of travel is dreaming about it before you go.

I purchase a Rick Steves guidebook for every country I’m vacationing to. My sons (about 30 years old) say that he’s more for my generation and they just scour the internet. I prefer the books, the hand-drawn maps and that Rick has been a good tour guide for decades and presents items for us with good insight.

I purchased this for myself, and 1 week later I purchased another as a gift for a friend who saw mine and wanted it. The photos are beautiful and large. You can see that a lot of research went into making this massive book.

I learned about countries I scarcely hear about. The only negative is that some of the country facts are inaccurate/not true, like the one about my country, the Bahamas. However, even if you disregard the country fact, the pictures are still captivating.

This is an excellent coffee table book! Brilliant photography! Great for studying High School cultural geography or just learning about this great big world.

This is a gorgeous book full of lovely photos, and it’s huge. i went through it slowly and enjoyed reading about all the countries. My only complaint, and this is totally subjective, is it picks and chooses the limited photos to portray and entire country.

What they choose isn’t always what I would choose to highlight that particular country.

I was looking forward to some armchair travel since COVID put an end to my travel plans. I have travelled a lot and have even been to many of the places in this book. I found Bill Bryson to complain about everything and tell you nothing about the cities.

You really don’t get an understanding of the vibe or history of the city. There are humorous moments from time to time, but its overshadowed by the whinging. He will tell you all the stereotypes about each nationality which comes across as unoriginal and juvenile.

Some of his comments about women may have been ok in the 90s but in todays world it really didn’t sit well with me. The worst part in the book is where he complains about Sweden and than says its no wonder Sweden has a high suicide rate.

Such an abhorrent and insensitive comment. Overall very disappointing. Im only halfway through the book and I really don’t feel like finishing it.

I am thrilled with the opportunity to review a book I have loved above most others since I received it as a gift in 1994. First the facts: I have owned four copies of this book. Even just reading the first three pages makes me laugh until I cry.

I think I will go read it again this evening. Maybe just the first chapter. On the multiple copies: This is because I keep giving it away to those I know will appreciate it most, then buying or magically finding another copy second hand.

On the laugh until I cry: I love Europe. I lived there for three years and I will always long to return. This book is for people who want to go to Europe, who are planning on going to Europe and who those who have already been to Europe.

It is a perfect American narrative of all the little things that make us so different from our friends across the pond. The story line involving Steve Katz is infinitely entertaining, and to my great joy, Mr.

Katz turned up again in Mr. Bryson’s recent novel A Walk In the Woods, about his adventures on the Appalachian Trail. I am sure this is not the most intellectual book review ever written, but if you learn nothing else, know this: If you have any interest in Europe and want to laugh (a LOT) and follow a great story, this is the one for you.

Just love any and all books by Bill Bryson. His books are so informative, fascinating, funny et al. Neither here nor there, magic.

I always do plenty of reading and planning prior to finalizing a vacation. I have been going to Europe for a month each spring and fall for years. I have been using Rick Steve’s books for most of those years to get great ideas of where to go and what to see.

I’m going to Iceland August 2019 and am coming up with a game plan for that travel time.

We are using this book to plan a trip to Iceland – what time of year we would go, what we might like to see or do, where we would stay, etc. This series (Rick Steves/travel) focuses on the value of these things, as much as the logistics.

In other words, is it (whatever “it is) worth the time, expense, travel, etc. From this perspective, the book is very much worth it. It assumes (I think) that you are a traveler from the US. Another tenet of this series is the idea of “traveler” vs.

“tourist”. Travelers are identified for their desire to immerse themselves in the culture of where they are, meeting people from the region, taking a moment to eat, drink, or in the case of the Iceland book, swim like Icelandic people.

Tourists are people who are trying to wrap themselves in the culture they are from while visiting someplace new (where to buy the cutest souvenirs, where to find food with which they are familiar, etc.

). If you are looking for a book that includes rich prose about Iceland, this is not that book. If you are looking for a book that tells you where to find the cheapest trinkets to remember your trip to Iceland, this is not that book.

If you are an American traveler looking for a book that leads you toward a more immersive experience in Iceland, this is that book.

Great travel book for Iceland! Lots of tips and maps as well as good recommendations for restaurants and hotels.

A nice book with lovely photos. Not a lot of details of drives just overviews of routes and most are quite classic/standard, Route 66 etc. but good just for getting ideas or just to browse through for something to do.

Purchased for my son and daughter-in-law who like fly drive holidays for their first wedding anniversary ( paper). Really pleased. Lovely photographs.

Gift for my husband which he absolutely loved! Can’t go wrong with Lonely Planet.

A lovely collection of thought provoking short essays with note pages for jotting down things like ‘useful foreign phrases’ or to ‘give drawing a go’. This book is very well presented with interesting quotes, images and photographs on different coloured pages on quality paper.

It therefore has a nice feel and is really easy to read, no complex theories here. However, each piece on different aspects of travel is written well and makes you think which has real value. I particularly liked ‘Small Pleasures’ on the appreciation of the minor, ordinary things you come across on your travels; ‘Travel as a Cure for Shyness’ on freeing yourself from inhibitions; ‘The Pleasures of Nature’ on how nature calms us because none of our troubles, disappointments or hopes has any relevance to it; and ‘Cherishing Memories’ on learning to regularly travel around our minds to reflect on trips we once took.

So enjoyable, and a perfect gift for someone preparing to travel.

As always another great publication from lonely planet. Wouldn’t leave home without it. We buy the Lonely planet for every country we visit. Great local knowledge is invaluable. We are sure we would miss some interesting sights without it.

Extensive information with Italy broken up in areas for smarter travelling in terms of distance, recommended attractions, things to do, best method of currency and transport etc. The suggested itinerary plans are very useful when it comes to planning.

I would recommend buying the book.

The lonely planet italy was our first purchase for planning our trip. The highlights / recommendations and colour images are very helpful

Rick Steves is the premier authority to assist travelers while in Europe. His books are like history books. High quality slick paper full color books. Great value!!

Enjoy all of Rick Steves travel books. He lays it all out there for you, grest for a first visit, lits of useful infi, times, prices, directuons, some language to help you converse with licals.

Excellent informative book on Portugal. Easy to read and lots of hints and suggestions on things to do, places to visit and where to eat and stay. Highly recommend this book if you are visiting Portugal.