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#Travel Guides: Use Them or Lose Them? July 19, 2009 By Natalie My husband and I take a Homeric odyssey by car each July and two to five smaller trips during the rest of the year sometimes I fly solo and sometimes we go together. Putting together our road trip takes Herculean effort luckily, I love to do reserach and organize itineraries and schedules. Orchestrating parties, trips, and other seemingly daunting tasks, especially when under a tight deadline, is sport for me. This love of planning compliments my travel obsession and that s why you ll find me pouring over travel books, magazines, and websites all through the year. For our annual road trip, I have a giant accordion file where I stuff pages ripped from magazines and articles printed from the internet. By May, the file is usually filled to bursting with places to visit, stay, or see and sheaves of restaurant suggestions. In the pre-internet era, I called on my dear friends Fodor s, Frommer s, and Let s Go to get ideas and information about my trips. In the last few years, I ve relied more on websites to guide me, though I did take out two or three books from the library for this year s trip (old habits die hard). A few of my travel guide books--one is a library book. I do a fair amount of research on Trip Advisor. though recently they ve had some issues with review integrity . I tend to read reviews with a grain of salt and just use the website for ideas. I also post reviews to help other travelers on their way. I plan about 75% of our trip beforehand, leaving the remaining 25% to chance and suggestions from locals. I ve found, through trial and error, that if I plan too much we don t have enough downtime to relax and if I plan too little, we get bored. By now you know that I m a curious person and like to know if other people have better or more efficient ways to do things that I do, so I m turning this over to you guys.
*There have also been scandals in the book form of travel guides see Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm for details. 16 CommentsI love to plan my trips, too. I rely on books (I love the Access guides for US cities) and websites, mostly slowtrav.com. The thought of taking off without hotel reservations and a general plan of what I want to do practically gives me hives. I don t get to go to that many places that I ve never been before, but when I do, I do look at travel guides and ask friends for suggestions. I like to leave some downtime in our schedule too. When I went to Spain with my aunt, we took 4 travel guides, but by the end of the trip, 3 had been left in various train stations and bus stops for the next traveler to pick them up, the only one that remained was Rick Steves. He was awesome! His books had the best tips and tricks for experiencing Spain. I don t know how his other books are, but I highly recommend his Spain volume. Ocracoke Island, NC is a good place for a stop, but it s kind of off the beaten path! We ve had good luck with Frommer s books. If you re considering the Pacific Northwest take a look at Best Places Northwest over many years and editions it s been useful for us for this area. We tend to use a combination of Frommers books, Trip Advisor and friends. We don t like to overplan it s unusual for us to have more than one meal and activity planned for any given day. Our goal for vacations is generally downtime. Give me a view of moving water (river or ocean) and a deck so I can read and enjoy a glass of wine and I m happy. The Hubster says his favorite parts of vacation are beer with lunch and an afternoon nap. At 2009.07.19 21:59, Kerri (BookEnds) said: I use to buy Trip Books I loved Lonely Planet. Since I ve met my boyfriend our trips seem to revolve around pre-booked sporting events and leaving the rest to chance. This can stress me out, especially when we roll into Seattle at 11:00pm because we only planned to drive to Vancouver and there are no hotels to be found because everyone else is there for baseball game too. Ugghh.
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