Let's Go Inc.

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.… (mer)

The United States was my first overseas trip and "Let's Go USA, 1994" my first guidebook. I loved the trip and the book certainly played a part in that.

If I was looking for criticisms, I would say that while I travelled through the US in late 1994, "Let's Go USA, 1994" was already out of date in some cases, with one hostel shut down (a late apology to the bloke who was living in the former hostel when I rang the doorbell at 1:00am) and some prices had shot up. Still, over 20 years since that trip, a flick through "Let's Go USA, 1994" still brings back a lot of happy memories.… (mer)