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Average Customer Rating:

Very helpful, but want more!

Customer Rating:

This Frommer's travel guide to Oregon proved to be very helpful for our trip. The star system for recommended hotels, restaurants and sites proved to be right on, as far as my trip was concerned. It was particularly helpful to use the star system when selecting wineries to visit/taste because the vast number of options in the Willamette Valley area would have otherwise been daunting. Where I found this book lacking was in only a few areas: (1) add smaller, less known wineries to your suggested places to visit; (2) add a walking tour to your section on Portland; and (3) add many more restaurants in all price ranges and types to the downtown Portland section.

Informative, exhaustive, great!

Customer Rating:

I took a trip with my family to Oregon a few months ago and we used this book as our guide, and it ended up becoming our Oregon Bible. We stayed for about a week and stopped in many locations: Portland, the Columbia River Gorge, Mt. Hood, Bend, Eugene, and all the way up the coast from Florence to Cannon Beach (and we still barely scratched the surface, it seems). We did the recommended restaurants, attractions, parks, hikes, and lodgings and found the descriptions for each were spot-on and detailed. We mostly ate and stayed at the no-star/one-star places and even those were excellent. Of course, the 3-star system that Frommer's Guides use is subjective but we ended up mostly agreeing with them (one exception was the Oregon Aquarium - it was good, but I'd say 2 stars rather than 3). We're first-timers and our trip was a bit of a whirlwind driving tour, so we learned a few things about Oregon and road-tripping in general: - Driving, especially in vast places like Oregon, can take a lot out of you. By the time you get to your next location, you may be too tired to do much or it may be too late, etc. To fully appreciate a given locale, try to spend at least one FULL day in the same spot. We wanted to do a lot of hiking throughout the trip, but only ended up doing one excursion (although it was mind blowing!) due to time constraints/exhaustedness. - Although Frommer's is good about giving you hours of operation and such for various locations, you should still call ahead to make sure it's open. And be careful - not all locations in the guide have the hours listed, especially if it's only mentioned in the middle of a paragraph (as opposed to having it's own separate entry). The Newberry Volcanic Monument south of Bend is an example... it ended up being closed on the day we were there. You never know when something will be closed for unforeseen reasons, out-of-order (ie. the elevator to Sea Lion Caves, rendering it inaccessible), or booked-up early (ie. Columbia River Gorge riverboat cruise). Also, when visiting any mountainous region, make sure the roads aren't closed due to snow (even in May or June!). - And a short mention about the Portland Metro Tram: it's a good way to see some of the city and is cheap, but it takes a _long_ time to get where you're going, especially if it's somewhere outside of Downtown (like, say, Forest Park). A trip can take an hour on the tram as opposed to 15 minutes or less by car. We don't have public transportation like that where we live, so we were not aware of this fact. - Don't rely on this guide (or any guide) to be your sole road map. I highly recommend buying a large, detailed map separately. All in all, we found this guide to be enormously informative, accurate, and indispensable, really. The author really knows his stuff.