While I love Rick Steves Guidebooks, especially the logistics, he doesn't cover everything. Planning a Dolomites and Innsbruck trip, and the RS book covers only Venice and Salzburg. Also planning a trip to southern Italy (Adriatic Coast, Puglia), also not covered by RS.
What brand of guidebooks do you like best (and why) to reference when you off off the RS path? Lonely Planet, Fommers, etc?
Lonely Planets typically have my preference, with two caveats:
- they're updated only every three years or so, so if the one for your destination hasn't been updated recently you might want to look at another series.
- they are VERY BAD at helping you prioritize sights, as they tend to exaggerate the merits of places.
Michelin Green Guides
DK Guides
have only ever brought one RS guide and that was to the Cinque Terra, as 8 years (+) ago that was the only English language guide to it I could find!
I always gravitate to Lonely Planet. I have thumbed through Frommers and Fodors periodically, and am turned off by their stodginess and shortage of the practical information I like to have. They seem to assume their clientele require a higher level of comfort and insulation from challenges. Rough Guides are good reading, but seem to be a bit harder to find around here.
I am planning a trip to Greece. The RS guide is great for Athens, but doesn't cover 75% (rough guess) of the country. I like the Lonely Planet guide to Greece, but it's almost "TLDR". The Fodor's Essential Greece has turned out to be the most helpful. I found it at the library and ended up buying a copy.
I like DK's Back Roads guide books - if you want to do a road trip through a country they have some really interesting off the beaten path suggestions. Also Insight Guides are quite good too, they are so colourful and fun to look through, I like them better than Lonely Planet.
I tend to research a place using several guidebooks and find that some are better for the sights, some for accommodations and restaurants, some for practical information, etc. I like and have used frequently the Michelin Green Guides, Lonely Planet, DK Eyewitness Guides, RS guides, and anything I can get from the tourism websites of the destinations I'm researching. Relying on just one guide book makes no sense to me.
I've found Frommer's very helpful for some non-European destinations, so I'd at least look at them to see if they cover areas I wanted to see. I'm finding the Michelin Green Guide helpful for areas of France not covered by RS.
Increasingly, I look at travel blogs written by people who live in the area my husband and I are interested in ---- many of these I just stumble upon while googling on some less-known town. Often these have great photos and much more detail than a guidebook can have.
For guidebook brands, yes, DK is tops because I like lots of photographs. Also the Insight and National Geographic guides for the same reason. But I do get every guidebook on a location from the library and either scan or photograph the pages I need. I don't ever use guidebooks for where to sleep or where to eat --- we find these are rarely the kind of places we like. Instead we have developed a very successful but labor-intensive system of our own.
I use Rick’s books exclusively and the internet. The other guides don’t give you details such as when to go, how to avoid crowds, museum or city pass info, walking tour companies, and private guide recommendations. TI and transportation info is great too. His walking tours in the book are invaluable. I am reading the Rough Guide to Canada for a trip this August and am falling asleep. The print is too small and the text so boring. It certainly doesn’t make it a must see place. Luckily I can research to my heart’s content on the internet. When I read Rick’s books, I feel like I am talking to a friend, does that make sense? I do want to add that the guides Agnes always recommends (in your pocket) are great for up to date info.
Just want to mention that national, regional and even local tourist offices publish own travel guides and brochures (example: overview of ebrochures by German National Tourist Board).
Bradt guides for my nature side and things off the beaten track. They limit the book regional scope to focus on the area rather than a little coverage of a wide area. Otherwise it is the publication that suits that trip. I often get s
Several from the library and make notes mixing it all together. I don't always carry a guide when traveling.
Most travel guides are updated every 3 years. For a good overview of many travel guidebooks, check out this site:
http://www.reidsguides.com/t_gi/t_gi_guidebooks.html
I am reading the Rough Guide to Canada for a trip this August and am falling asleep. The print is too small and the text so boring. It certainly doesn’t make it a must see place.
As a Canadian, IMHO, the Rough Guide and Let's Go would be my last choices for guide books on Canada.
Suggest you have a look at the Moon Travel Guides at your public library or online.
I am a huge Rough Guide fan. Also I always get a Cartoville guide when doing a city break (I don’t know if these are published any more in English, they at least used to have a U.S. publisher), and also French Geoguides for regions.
I still buy paper guidebooks for every trip I take (and some I’m only dreaming of).
Are Cadogan guides still published? I used to like those a lot but can’t think of having seen any in years. Maybe I am just not looking in the right places. Always used to enjoy a visit to Stanford’s on Longacre in London but haven’t visited since they moved out of those wonderful digs.
DK eyewitness are the best for figuring out what to see and they have wonderful pictures.
I don’t use guidebooks for hotels and restaurants, that information changes too quickly. It’s helpful to know that a particular area of town is by a university and has a lot of inexpensive restaurants or that another area of the city is known for a large amount of Asian restaurants, but specific names I’ll get from travel forums. Even a new edition of a guidebook is almost a year out of date when published.
Lonely planet can be good, but they seem to have gone quite trendy lately focusing on vegan restaurants and trendy bars. I’m sure they’re not all like that and if that’s your scene, go for it
I think you meant to say Vienna (not Venice) and Salzburg. But the "Vienna, Salzburg & Tirol" book DOES cover Innsbruck and the Dolomites.
I like Rough Guides, but Lonely Planet was also very helpful on our trip to southern Italy.
I like Rough Guides best. I continue to use RS guides a fair amount because they are so readable. I tend to use Google Images for pictures (as opposed to DK guides). I, like most others (I think), also make heavy use of the internet.
Nomadic Matt's not-so-positive observations on Lonely Planet: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/lonely-planet/
Are Cadogan guides still published?
Looking on Amazon it looks like the most recent Cadogan Guide they have is 2014 Provence - nothing newer than that though. I also like their guides and have an older one for Provence and one for Wales I used when planning that trip.
No guidebooks as they are kind of useless.
Everything you need is online and up to date, from hotels, tours, restaurants, museum openings, to maps.
A guidebook cannot ever be up to date. Hotels and restaurants listed cannot be checked every year. This is impossible.
I don't find guidebooks useless. I really like reading them for the overall picture they give, and how things and places relate to each other. Yes, the hotels and restaurants might not be the most up-to-date (i check internet for those and for current visiting hours /prices for sites), but a good write-up on, say, the Colosseum is always going to be relevant.
Just my view, of course, and not trying to force anyone to ascribe to it! But I find great pleasure in perusing good guidebooks (and their maps).
Janet,
I downloaded the Kindle RS sample, and now see it does cover Innsbruck and the Tirol area. Will buy that and then see if I need another guidebook. (spell check, yes, did mean Vienna)
I use only Rough Guide. The old Let's Go I still use sometimes for back up info.
In the past I did use Michelin Green Guide only for Germany I don't use RS, never have.
I pick whatever guidebook appears to be best suited to the destination and the level of detail I need. I've used the following with success:
- Lonely Planet
- Rough Guide
- National Geographic
- Bradt Guide
- Moon Guide (mostly for US destinations)
- TimeOut
- In Your Pocket Guides (City)
- Foot Print Guides (for South American countries)
- NYT Travel articles - "36 Hours in ...."
- Also, let's not forget, the excellent resources available though individual tourism websites hosted by the country or city (e.g. Iceland, Romania, Quebec City, etc.)
I also found that some of the best guides are found on the ground (in foreign bookstores, in English print), especially in areas that don't get a lot of US tourists.
I don’t have one go to travel guide. I like Fodors quite a bit.
I use the RS guides mainly what i like to call the 'step by step' process of getting to and staying at destinations. For example how to get from airports, train stations and cruise ships to city centres or to understand simple local customs such as tipping or getting a table at a restaurant. For big picture of where to go and what to see I prefer Eyewitness and the spectacular photos. For history of a location or country my go-to is the National Geographic Traveler series. My wife and I are planners and we'll use a combination of books as we travel. I do find RS books the handiest to bring along on a trip though.
I like DK guides for my bookshelf at home. They're full of photos but too heavy IMO to pack.
I like Michelin Green Guide best. There's a little information on everything. It compliments Rick's lots of information on a little.
I'll check Lonely Planet and Rough Guide out of the Library, as part of my planning process, but haven't felt the need to buy and pack one yet.
I tend toward budget travel. Many of the choices (e.g. Frommers, Fodors) cater to more expensive itinerary choices.
We took the Insight guides for Salzburg and Venice on our June trip. Easy to pack, and good information about attractions, and history. Not as many travel tips as the RS guidebooks, though.
I tend to buy both a RS guidebook and a Lonely Planet guidebook if they have a recent edition (the fact that the latter are updated every 2 or 3 years was mentioned by a previous poster). Frankly, the RS guides are the second to none at describing how to get from Point A to Point B, and the maps are excellent, but I feel they fall short in both hotel and restaurant listings. One thing that wasn't mentioned is that if you only need a chapter or two out of a Lonely Planet guidebook, you can purchase them as pdfs and print them out or just keep them on your phone or iPad. I think the chapters are something like $4.99 each, which is cheaper than buying the guidebook.
I like Lonely Planet and Rough Guides to start the very basics of planning. It helps that lots of Lonely Planet guides are available as part of the Kindle Unlimited subscription - just downloaded their Israel & West Bank guide to begin planning my October trip. It's a lot of info, and it's not as opinionated as RS guides, but it's a good place to start. I like the two listed above because they understand that some travelers are on a budget and tend to have a more youthful vibe than Frommers.
Once I get a basic outline of what's available to do, I usually start doing deep research online to get the more opinionated takes, from TripAdvisor to Yelp to blogs, although many blogs are monetized and thus are essentially advertisements so it's always good to take this information with a grain of salt. And then of course there's this forum!
