Which guidebooks do you recommend?

[bigrick]

Rather than further hijack another thread let me consolidate my question here.

Carolinian recommended Rough Guide or Lonely Planet in general.
x3 skier recommended Eyewitness Travel by DK in general and specifically for Berlin.

What other specific or general guidebooks do you recommend?

 

[zazz]

Rather than further hijack another thread let me consolidate my question here.

Carolinian recommended Rough Guide or Lonely Planet in general.
x3 skier recommended Eyewitness Travel by DK in general and specifically for Berlin.

What other specific or general guidebooks do you recommend?

I have used Rough Guide and Frommers in the past. Personally I have never been a big fan of Lonely Planet. What are you looking to do with it? Need a sightseeing guide, hotels, restaurants?

Do you have a smartphone? Lonely Planet does have pretty cheap apps and it saves you from schlepping a book around.

 

[classiclincoln]

Rick Steves is the MAN!!

Used his book in Italy & Portugal with a lot of success. Ebay for used ones is the way to go.

 

[Denise]

For a major trip I use a combination of Eyewitness Travel, Rick Steves and Lonely Planet.

 

[stmartinfan]

I like the Rick Steves ones as well, if I'm going somewhere for the first time. His books seem to do a better job of narrowing a vast amount of information about a location down to the best things to see. But then I like to supplement his book with something like Frommers or Fodors to get more information on the sites I've selected.

I like to get a variety of different books about a location from the library and skim through them all to get some different viewpoints. Then I may end up purchasing one of them to take along on the trip.

Of course, I find the planning for a trip lots of fun, so reading the travel books is entertainment for me!

Another thing I like to do - I'll read books or memoirs written about traveling to a location or someone who has chosen to move there. Most book stores have a section like this adjacent to the travel books or you can do a library search. Of course, some of them have become extremely popular - like "Under the Tuscan Sun" or "Eat, Pray, Love," but there are many more less known books that give you a perspective on living in place that I find fascinating, especially if I'm about to visit there.

 

[vacationhopeful]

I will look at Rick Steve's in the store, but don't like the limited basic info he provides. I do enjoy his travel shows, but for entertainment value. I don't think I have ever brought his books.

Looking thru multiple books for different locales, I find some will hit my interests great for one city or country. Judge guide each separately, I consider size/weight, print size, and map detail along with content.

So, if my plan is to go to Budapest for 3 or 4 days, I only need a great book about that one city. If I am going for 10 days, I will being doing daytrips outside of the cental city - need more country info.

 

[zazz]

If you are going to Budapest, try to see if Andras Torok still publishes his guide to the city. I swore by it when I was there in 1994-1995. I just don't know if he still updates it and I am at work so I don't have time to look. Even if he doesn't update it much, the historical information about the city is invaluable.

 

[Carolinian]

I like Rick Steves style of travel, and have enjoyed his show the times I have seen it, but I don't care for his guidebooks. They are a guided tour in a book, and I never liked guided tours. I want to follow my own interests, not someone else's. I like a guidebook that lays out all the options and gives me the info to pick out what I think is worth doing.

To give just one example from when I was still living in the states and travelling to Europe, I decided to overnight at the end of one trip in Limburg on the Lahn, a great medieval town that is 18 minutes from Frankfurt airport by the high speed train. I went to Barnes and Nobles to check various guidebooks for hotel recommendations. I got several options presented in the sections on the town in the Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, and Lets Go travel guides, but when I pulled Rick Steves, he did not even mention Limburg on the Lahn at all, much less list any hotels. I find way too many gaps like that in Rick Steves.

Another great guidebook series for cities, particularly in eastern Europe but also expanding in western Europe is the In Your Pocket series. Much of their guidebooks can be viewed online and downloaded. They are at www.inyourpocket.com For a city break, the very first thing I check is whether there is an In Your Pocket guide to that city. This series started from a conversation among a group of British travellers in the Baltics soon after the Berlin Wall fell, when there were no guidebooks and they decided to fill the need. They have expanded all over Europe from there.

 

[beejaybee]

Off the Beaten Track

The problem I have with Rick Steve's guides is that he only covers the major cities. For example, we have an upcoming week at Chateau Maulmont in Randan, FR, but he doesn't cover that part of France known as Le Grand Massif. Same with Germany, when our cruise docked in Warnemunde, he had nada about the region.

Eyewitness guides and the Frommer/Fodor books do provide a broad range of information on lesser visited areas. And don't laugh, but I actually have saved articles from RCI's Endless Vacations mag that were very useful,e.g. last year's Lake Balaton report- in fact, I emailed them in appreciation and they published my letter & foto of DH & I (but as typical for RCI, they messed up my second of fame by printing my location as Fort Collins, CO!)

 

[Carolinian]

Congratulations on your good fortune. That is a very difficult exchange as only two of their units are timeshare and most of their owners use their weeks rather than exchanging. It is a great resort, and there is lots to do in the area if you are there June-August. Many of the chateaux in the area you can tour are closed the rest of the the year. Still it is a very enjoyable part of France. The Dordogne is a longish but doable day trip but it is probably better to do a DAE exchange directly into the Dordogne. Even outside summer there is enough to do to fill a week.

BTW, did you get the 2BR or 1BR unit? The 2BR has a great balcony to eat breakfast on.

The problem I have with Rick Steve's guides is that he only covers the major cities. For example, we have an upcoming week at Chateau Maulmont in Randan, FR, but he doesn't cover that part of France known as Le Grand Massif. Same with Germany, when our cruise docked in Warnemunde, he had nada about the region.

Eyewitness guides and the Frommer/Fodor books do provide a broad range of information on lesser visited areas. And don't laugh, but I actually have saved articles from RCI's Endless Vacations mag that were very useful,e.g. last year's Lake Balaton report- in fact, I emailed them in appreciation and they published my letter & foto of DH & I (but as typical for RCI, they messed up my second of fame by printing my location as Fort Collins, CO!)

 

[beejaybee]

Appreciate the Good Wishes

Thanks, Carolinian. We got the 2 bedroom for the last week of June. I had an ongoing search 2 yrs out for Chateau Maulmont + a dozen Italian t/s and got it with FC. Just got an Eyewitness Guide "Backroads France" and Drives 12 & 14 seem to be in proximity to Randan. #15 goes to the Dordogne area which I hadn't considered til your post.

One of the best parts of timesharing is to be able to explore areas we might never have visited were it not for having a homebase for a week.