Guide to Guides
by Richard P. Greenfield
by Richard P. Greenfield
You've just been assigned your first business trip to Paris. And if you have a spare moment you'd like to take in some Picassos and pick up some cologne for your boyfriend. Where should you look for information?
Or suppose it's Paris, Texas, not Paris, France. And you're jonesing for some real barbecue. Where's the place all the locals go?
Not long ago, a traveller s choices were pretty limited. There were the noted three F's: Fielding, Fodor and Frommer, and a bit more recently, the Let's Go guides. For the off-the-beaten-track locales, the Lonely Planet guides were the place to turn.
Well, it's 1995, not 1965, and the prices they have been a changing.
Unfortunately, Europe on $5 a day has become $5 for a croissant in a Right Bank cafe. Fortunately, the three F's have plenty of competition at both the high and low ends of the travel markets.
This proliferation of guides of all types and in all shapes and sizes leads to
one very general rule: Unless you have only the most cursory interest in a
particular place, or have only enough time to hit one museum and one restaurant,
be prepared to buy more than one guide and to read more than one guide. The
important information, whether it's where to eat, drink, sleep, shop or a region's
local history, is now spread out over dozens of guides. Some are published
internationally, others are compiled in the U.S., and an increasing number
are published by regional, smaller presses.
The traveller can start easily with travel writing. A category distinct from guides and one whose origins date back millenia, way back to Herodotus' time. You can get a feeling of atmosphere, or "overthereness", which even the best guides cannot provide.
Until recent times, when the number of world travellers was much smaller,
this travel writing was
far more popular than it is now. Sadly, some of the truly marvelous books,
like those of Richard Haliburton, are long out of print. Nevertheless
the genre survives with writers such as Ian Buruma, Jeff Greenwald and Pico Iyer.
Recently, Doubleday published Ina Caro's The Road
from the Past, which is a combination of travelogue and history taken
across the geographical and historical length of France. Perhaps most
cheering to those who really want to get a sampling of recent writings about
possible destinations, there is the new series Traveler's Tales, published by
O'Reilly & Associates. The first three volumes covers Thailand, Mexico and India.
Future titles will include France, Germany, the Czech Republic and Australia.
Suitably armed with some literary impressions of your perspective destination, the dedicated traveller is ready to tackle the maze of guides. Part of negotiating the sheer number of guide choices if making a clear assessment of what kind of traveller you are, or want to be.
For example, if you are flying to Paris but will spend six days of tense negotiations in a 50th floor office of the Tour Montparnasse, and taking in the culture means taking a 15 minute Cafe Noir break, then ParisWalks is for you. This a series that includes, among others, Beijing, Berlin, Florence, London, Prague and Jerusalem.
For a bit more depth, the Access Guides the series includes Hawaii, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C. and several European cities as well. If all the time you have is a few hours, or, conversely, if you have a lot of time and plan to walk a lot, a title from either of these series will serve you well.
