Michelin Spain & Portugal Tourist and Motoring Atlas (Michelin Spain & Portugal Tourist & Motoring Atlas) [Spiral-bound]

I just returned from a two week trip in Spain in which we logged over 1500 miles of driving. I was the navigator and had to rely on this atlas.

This atlas was terrible.

1. The labeling of highways is very incosistent and they simply give up trying to label them around cities due to apparent limited space- so in areas where there are bypasses, etc. you are left to a combination of guessing and trying to trace highways' sources. Only the three or so major cities have these labeled, but most cities have these bypasses.

2. The exit numbers were incorrect several times. One lead us on a 2 hour detour because an exit to a highway the map said was there wasn't, so we had to go a different route. It happened again when trying to get to Barcelona's airport- the map said there was only a 608 exit in the area. In reality there is a 607 and 609 AND no 608. Thanks to the Spanish urban planners to clearly marking the route to the airport 40 kms out on highway signs.

3. The most frustrating was that there is a significant gap between the main pages and the zoomed in city pages in the back. This meant that we were left to guessing most of the time on how to bridge the gap from highway to city center- this varied sometimes from driving for 15 minutes in the dark, to simply one turn (again thanks to Spain's plethora of signage we were generally ok- but it was unnerving).

4. Labels on the city maps was often incorrect- especially with labelling Parking Lots. In 80% of the cities we were in it didn't list the main public parking ramps- but, for example, in Seville it listed a Theme Park's parking as public parking (which is was most definitely only for the park)

5. And this is the worst part- this is the only atlas that I could find online... When we travelled to England and Wales we were able to buy atlases (none of them Michellin) that were so detailed every roundabout was shown- even on country back roads. This

So bottom line- due to Spain's love of one way streets and old world street sizes, and the fact that this utterly terrible atlas is the best anyone has come up with, unless you are an expert navigator- take the train between cities OR simply print off Google maps of everywhere you're going (once I found out how bad this atlas was I simply went to an internet cafe and printed off various maps from Google Maps to make it through the trip).

This is an excellent and highly detailed driving map. My only negative comment is that it is so detailed, a magnifying glass may be needed to read certain roadway areas.

We have not used it driving through the countryside yet but needed it to locate places to stay and distances between accommodations. I will update this review after my return from the trip. We have used similar large scale maps for other countries and have been most satisfied.

We have used this on two separate month long driving trips in Spain and Portugal. One problem is the major road building that has occurred within the past few years. A lot of the new interstate type roads were not on it. However, this last trip we had a new GPS with current European maps and half the new roads weren't on that either! I always like to have an overview rather than the small regional and city maps and this gives it to you.