I am curious to know how other people bring their guide books with them when they travel. I am looking at bringing three on our upcoming trip, which feels silly, but I don’t wanna be without them.
I am contemplating cutting out the pages that I think I will need and stapling them together, but feel like there must be a better system. Taking photographs of them could work but finding content will be a pain.
If you have a better way please share !
In the past, I have cut out the pages and put them in the little binders that Rick sells.
I cut out the sections I think I will need, and toss the rest. Binder clip each section. I toss the sections when I'm done with each town/country as well. Life is too short to scan or photo all those pages. If I am going back in the future, I'll want a newer guide anyway.
I've downloaded the e-book versions from my local library to my phone.
If it's a book I particularly want to keep intact, I'll buy a 2nd copy. I can often find inexpensive, older editions on eBay. The walks aren't likely to have changed much and that's what I usually want a take-along copy of.
I pull out sections, such as Rick's guided walks, and put them in his little Guidebook Page Binders, which are often (including now) on sale for $1.00. I picked up a few with past orders to minimize shipping.
Quite a few of the Kindle editions of the guidebooks are on sale on Amazon. In addition to my hard copy, last night I bought a copy of the Best of Istanbul book for $3.99. (That is one of the better deals, but others are also on sale.) I'll have the entire guidebook on my tablet (to research restaurants, activities, etc.) and will rip out select sections of the hard copy to bring on my trip and carry on walks.
I normally buy my guidebooks used on Amazon. Since the cost is seldom more than a couple of dollars I have no problem cutting out the pages I need for the particular trip we're going on. I'll then jettison the used pages once we've finished with them, so my collection is only making a one way trip.
We are doing the RS Southern Italy tour and only need the part of the RS Italy book from Rome forward. We broke the spine of the book, cut that part of the book out and reinforced the still intact bound edges of the book with clear packing tape. Then my husband printed a photo from our last trip to Rome and made a cover for the “new” book.
I also cut out only the applicable sections and staple or use binder clips. I leave the sections behind in our lodging for other guests or give it away to another tourist.
I have taken mine to the local Kinkos/FedEx and have them slice off the binding. I take out the pages I don't want to keep (including the front and back cover for stability) and then have them bind the remainder. Depending on the size of the book it might be a comb or spiral bind - either works great. I've also combined parts of two guide books in one to save space.
Another thread is going on somewhere (I can't find it now) about the pros and cons of RS guidebooks on Kindle to save weight. Mixed opinions on how easy or hard it is to access a specific listing or discussion on a Kindle vs. paper. I've become a book-tearer-aparter, especially for a RS tour where the book is part of the package. I still have some reassembled (held together with rubber bands) books from previous trips. I used to check guidebooks out of my local library and photocopy relevant pages to take along, but that can get expensive and is probably illegal too.
On a recent trip to Berlin I bought the RS Berlin book and took the whole thing along, since my plans were ambitious and unspecific enough that I couldn't narrow down to certain chapters or pages. It was pretty heavy but fit into my belt pack, and I was glad to have it.
I'd hate to bring along three full-sized physical guidebooks though. Maybe you can find shorter, smaller ones for specific cities, or try the library-checkout-photocopy workaround where it seems worth the cost and reduces weight.
I also break the spine at the location of the first and last pages I’m bringing and peal them away and they will then have the binder glue (mostly) intact and also use the guidebook page binders linked above.
The first time I tried separating sections of a guidebook it didn’t go so well because I wasn’t aware of breaking the spine (then I saw Ricks advice to do that first, much easier than an exacto, lol).
Thanks for the suggestions. I am old fashioned and like the idea of bringing paper copies ( I highlighted all over the books), so will either see if I can get Kinkos to Macguiver a custom combination for me, do what Mary did with packing tape and/or buy some of Rick's binders. I had completely forgotten about those.
Thanks again!
I take sections of books but break them up by topic. I might take with me the Hotels section on a major city I'm visiting, just in case, but I wouldn't expect actually to need it and wouldn't carry it around with me like the Sightseeing section and the Restaurants sections.
I use staples for short sections of guidebooks, and I've found they don't hold particularly well in heavy use. It works better for me if I cut a small rectangle out of stiff paper (like a manila folder) and wrap it around the top left corner of the guidebook segment before stapling.
I basically never throw away a map. I cut maps for small towns out of guidebooks, or photocopy them, so I'll have something in hand when I show up on a day trip. Otherwise, I feel at see if the tourist office isn't open. A loose piece of paper holds up pretty well for me for a single day, as long as I don't get caught out in the rain.
I thoroughly the read the guidebooks for the countries we will be visiting. For several years, I have carefully ripped out the few pages for each location that I want with me. If you bend it backwards sharply at that page, they will carefully come out intact. So, for instance, I want the city walking tour info & the highlights that are of interest, don’t need the hotel or restaurant pages, and might want info that says specifics for a train or bus situation- where to buy tickets/ this train station doesn’t sell tickets, etc. Usually this is not more than 3-4 separate pages. I staple those together as you mentioned, along with a page of extra info from my research. When we are traveling on the train, I pull out our next tiny packet, and we review our options. (If I’m traveling solo, I will read the few pages again while I’m waiting for my lunch order to arrive.)
I don’t throw these away. When we’re back home, I place the pages back into the book and secure with a large rubber band. I like to refer to them when we’re returning to the same location again. Since I’m only bringing a very small subset of the book, it’s not heavy to bring home.
I don’t use the guidebook recommendations for lunch, but I do find some restaurants during research that I would like to try, so I add them to the TripIt app. Also any activities I want to be sure to do. Since using TripIt for a few international trips, the physical pages of info I bring has diminished.
Great recommendations! I believe this is the other thread that Dick was referring to?
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/books-movies/rick-steve-kindle-editions
I photocopy the pages I want to take with me, and then staple them into sections for my stops.
Then when I am done with the first stop, I can throw that photocopy away (and so on throughout the trip), but I still have the intact book back home.
Kindle app all the way - I usually have 5-6 e-guidebooks when I travel. I love it because there are no heavy books, no carting around pages, everything is accessible and easy to search (and bookmark). Plus if you want to check out a restaurant or sight quickly, just click on the hotlink and you're there in a couple of seconds.
Depending upon how specialized the book is, I will leave it in the hotel room or apartment when I leave. This is for single city guides, like the Rome or Paris book. It's a great gift for the next renter of the premises.
For other areas, I do the rip and toss method of book discarding.
It is personal preference as seen in previous responses... but going digital has made our travel life MUCH easier in general... books... guidebooks... travel documents....etc.. One can always screen shot and "favorite" various pages for reference, and delete later. What really got us started was being in several countries on one trip... I completely understand some folks reservations... but it took me a while to get comfortable with the bookmarking... but now it comes naturally.
I don’t take any books or parts of them with me. I take photos of the pages that I want and make an album on my phone called Trip Planning. So all of that is right there accessible when I need it but does not take up any space/weight
bxr,
Which solution to use may depend on what type of luggage you'll be using on the trip. If you have larger wheeled luggage that you'll be checking and have room, just put them in a spare corner and take the three books with you. If space is more limited, then you'll have to look at one of the other solutions mentioned in this thread.
I tend to pack along one or two of the books that I'll be using most, if I have room. If I'm not going to be bringing a book for a particular country or city, I note pertinent details such as sightseeing in my printed Itinerary. I have also downloaded some guidebooks (both RS and Lonely Planet) in Kindle or PDF format to my phone, and those can also be viewed on my laptop. The downloaded guidebooks are especially useful while touring as I always have the phone with me.
I usually take my guidebook with me.
I just wanted to pass along some recommendations for plastic envelops to keep those guidebook pages in as well as other papers you might have. I learned about both these products a couple of years ago here on the RS forum.
Larger size:
smaller size:
I've never bought a Kindle edition of a Rick Steves guidebook before, but with the great sale prices on Amazon, I bought the electronic copy ($3.99 sale on Best of Istanbul) of the book I also have in hard copy for my tour. I've already realized the additional value. I keep my trips organized electronically in OneNote and it's been a real bonus to copy snippets of maps and walks into my electronic trip planning notebook. I can see making good use of the digital version on the tour bus, since I don't plan to bring the entire physical copy.
I left my hard copy guide book in a cab in Belgium a few years ago on the 3rd day - YIKES!
Immediatly downloaded replacement to the small tablet I was carrying as a computer - saved the day.
Just last week downloaded a guide to Bologna (Rick does not cover) when we decided to spend a couple of days there.
A good option if confortable with electronic media.
Several trips ago, I made the mistake of having information in too many different places: ripped-out pages from guidebooks, bookmarks on my phone, photos of guidebook pages on my phone, a bunch of stuff in a Google spreadsheet, a 10-page Word document both attached to an email to myself and printed up, screenshots of things I found online, marked-up paper maps and digital maps with places flagged, and emails to and from our apartment hosts on my phone. Yeah, don't do that. My husband loves the spreadsheet, so we kept that. I love spreadsheets, too, but don't like them for travel information --- I don't know, makes me feel like I'm working or something.
Here's what I do these days. I get all the guidebooks from the library and photograph the pages that are useful and print those up. I take screenshots of things I find online and print those up. I have a Word document that I print up. Then --- and here's the part I enjoy doing but probably other people wouldn't --- I cut up and trim all these printed pages, organize them into categories (usually by location), then use double-sided scotch tape to stick them onto blank paper. Then I both print up these new pages AND I photograph each page with my phone. The photoed pages go into labeled folders on my phone (like "Rome churches" and "Orvieto restaurants") --- you can easily search for the information you need that way. In theory, I don't even need to bring the paper pages with me on the trip, but I can't quite give them up. I do like to scribble on them as we travel.
I use an idea like Nancys8. Basically I create my own guidebook by copying pages from the hardcopies that I have read. That added benefit is that I can journal on the same pages. This also encourages reading the guidebook as preparation for the trip.
