Lonely Planet Pacific Northwest Trips (Regional Travel Guide)

 (36 customer reviews)

I live in the Pacific Northwest wine country and prior to that in the Portland area so I was curious if this book would be helpful to send along with visitors to our area. If the Washington wine section is any indication of the others, the areas covered are very cursory which maybe they have to be when covering an entire region. The book is a great idea but would benefit from a few tweaks to it.

This book does well in the more remote areas of the northwest where sites are fewer and therefore the book can be all encompassing. For example, the Prehistoric Trip is one we took a few years back and this book does a good job of covering that area thoroughly.

If you are heading to Portland or Seattle and have a very short time to see as much as you can, this book can be a real asset. If you want a lot of detailed information, you need a book that covers that city more specifically.

The biggest problem with this book is that a lot of the places the book...Read more

Living in the region covered by "Pacific Northwest Trips" gives me the perspective to be aware of what's NOT in the book as well as what is. My take on it is that it is geared toward the young, "we're too hip to do do what all the tourists do" traveler. Nothing wrong with that, but if you want to see all a region has to offer, you probably want an additional guide or two on top of this one. Especially if you're looking for lodging along the way!

The back of this guide claims "family-friendly" listings throughout, but I didn't see many at all. In fact, many of the recommended tours are wine tasting tours, pub tours and brewery tours (in other words, not for families!). In fact, for the "48 hours in Portland" tour, it says "We'll start with the obvious: handcrafted beer...". Then, the 48 hours in Portland includes trips to pubs, clubs (one even being a strip club "with history" LOL) and walking on bridges. No mention of the great Portland Zoo? Again, my complaint is that it's not family-friendly at all. On a related note, I didn't see mention of tours and their facilities to accomodate persons with physical disabilities. In a way, this guide assumes you're young (the music playlist suggestions are silly, in my opinion. I don't need a travel guide to tell me what to listen to on my car stereo), without family, and physically strong.

What I like about the guide is that it has beautiful photography, has some quirky and...Read more