We will be with a tour group for a couple weeks in May in Portugal and Spain. Since all of our tour is covered, I was looking at Rick's guide books for some general information and noticed one for Spain and Portugal on Amazon. It was published in 2007. If I do not have to worry about admission prices but just want general info, would that book work. Also, would want hotel and restaurant recs in Porto and San Sebastian. I know he has more current books of Portugal and Spain separately but was trying to save a little. Gracias.
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
7157 posts
Your local library probably has more current versions. My local library has the 2022 Spain and 2023 Best of Spain and the 2023 Portugal versions.
If just looking for general information the main tourist sites remain the same. Depending on where you’re going, there’s probably a local website maintained by the city, province, or region with current information on places to visit and things to see.
Posted by
Phoenix🌵
3076 posts
Look at the travel store on this website. Updated Spain guidebook is to be published this month. Best of Spain guidebook was published November 2023. Portugal published in January 2023.
Going to the source will give you the best information.
https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/guidebooks#spain-portugal-morocco
Posted by
West Coast
71 posts
I would not buy or even borrow a travel book that was published in 2007. Amazon has the current versions of the RS Portugal and RS Spain Guides as well as the RS combo Portugal and Spain maps.
In light of how much your tour group trip costs, the difference in price between recently published guides and ones that are 18 years old should not be a big deal. That being said, we purchased our Spain book when it was the newest edition at a thrift store last Fall--it was useful for the trip we took in May. We also bought a Lonely Planet book that was also a new edition, but did not find it as helpful as the RS one.
I checked the online catalogs of libraries in 3 different counties--none of them had the current or even the previous edition of the RS Spain books.
Posted by
Eastern Iowa, USA
8058 posts
A 15 year old guidebook is at best interesting reading, but all it will prompt is then going somewhere else to get current information, and to a degree, break your heart to see the changes in prices, I wouldn't bother.
You can get Kindle or eReader versions of the guides for relatively little, borrow from libraries for free, or just browse on the web and gain better and current information.
Posted by
Denver, CO USA
492 posts
What percentage of your trip cost are 2 new books?
And maybe Lonely Plant also.
Michelin, TripAdvisor, Yelp, The Fork for restaurants.
Posted by
Used to be Steilacoom, now it’s Las Vegas
2296 posts
I ordered a couple of older RS guides from Better World Books before our latest trip to Spain because I like to mark up and eventually tear up my guidebooks for travel.They have a used one from 2020 which would probably be better than 2007. The pandemic threw the travel scene into a whole new world, so for anything specific you need to check the official site on the internet.