It's not usual to read a phrasebook from cover to cover, but after booking our honeymoon I went out to buy one and then that's what I did. This one doesn't have quite the fabulous phrases I found in the BBC Portuguese one ("I'm sorry officer, I didn't know it was illegal" is something we could usefully learn in any language), but I think it will be helpful - although perhaps not so much the section on chatting someone up. I've now forgotten pretty much all of it, but I've a week left to brush up my skills :) I think it will be very handy while we're away.

Addendum: while it was helpful I did find that I felt very limited by my inability to string whole sentences together unless they were the exact ones in the book. And it frustrated me that I simply couldn't work out when it was appropriate to use "Prego" and when "Per favore". Still, we were a lot less hopeless than we would have been without it! ( )