Let's Go 2000: Austria & Switzerland : The World's Bestselling Budget Travel Series

by Inc. Let's Go

Release Date: 01 January, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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Best value for the money

I've spent months in Austria and Switzerland, using a variety of travel books, and Let's Go is the best, bar none. They have excellent coverage of the outdoors, witty writing, and they find cheap, cheap, cheap places that nevertheless manage to be great finds. The maps have improved over previous years, but they could stand an extra one or two. Fortunately, the rest of the information is up to date, as it is the most-recently updated book (so far as I've seen).

The other books, I'm sorry, .... Lonely Planet books are updated every eon, and they've got the prose style of a VCR instruction manual. Rough Guides, while quite literate, lack the phone numbers, dates, and times that are the bread and butter of budget travel guides. The Frommer's and Fodor's guides to Austria are a joke: they have few listings outside of 4 star hotels, and could have been written by the tourist offices! The point of Aus/Switz is its natural beauty, and appreciating that is facilitated by good info, not by spending cash.

One note: the focus here is for the budget traveler. Those with money will benefit from this, as many of the most friendly places in Austria are cheap (like Privatzimmer and family-run Pensionen). However, the other, mostly older travelers who want to stay in posh hotels and would rather take a cable car than go hiking might want to get a book like Frommer's, or just do whatever the local tourist office tells you to do.

missing info not that important

Yes, the editors made a serious mistake when they forgot to include Prague, Budapest, and Munich and yet advertised it on the cover. Those were only bonuses, not the focus of the book. I bought the book for my year abroad in Austria and found it extremely helpful. For the time I had it I did not get lost following the maps and the information was accurate. Unfortunately the book is now in a river in Luzern. Ran after it for a long time with no luck. I replaced it with the 2001 edition and was disappointed to find that they cut out a city that I was planning to go to (Cesky Krumlov). I thought the 2000 version was good. If you want the three cities they missed, copy the pages from a book in the library.