Guidebooks, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love tourist traps
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Today, if you don’t mind, I would like to start a discussion. Actually, what I’m doing is trying to pick the collective mind of Europe a la Carte readers, but don’t want to look so needy. So here’s your topic: Guidebooks, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love tourist traps.
Oh yes, a controversial topic and one which I’ve already loaded. I am, as I’ve already mentioned a lot, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kinda traveller. I don’t like being organised, I revel in the freedom of not having any idea what today brings. Itineraries are useful bits of paper when I’m getting someone’s address and plans are things used to build skyscrapers. But when you move around in this fashion it really is vital to have a quick, encompassing source of reference to work out where, tonight, you’ll lay your head.

Home on the Road by tpuyol
Of course there is a big problem associated with this: you see only the things that your guidebook tells you are good, and you go to places that are filled only with other tourists clutching their copy of The Book in sweaty hands.
Now the web offers a lot of information, this blog is being one example, but the problem is how to distil it. It can take a lot of surfing around to gather the specifics you are after. If I’m in a small town outside Ljubljana internet access may not be a given - plus on the road I’d rather be experiencing the country than communing with Google.

Where Shall I Go? by The Wandering Angel
The behemoth of all guidebooks, Lonely Planet, is usually the first I go to because I’m familiar with it and can quickly get the addresses I need. Let’s Go and Rough Guide are also hugely popular, but I always had issues with the accuracy of the maps – although I haven’t bought one in a few years now so that may have improved. Regardless of which you pick though, you’ll still find yourself in a sea of other foreigners, not a local amongst them, all looking for an “authentic” experience. I have even switched to German guidebooks to try and avoid this trap, but that’s just resulted in being surrounded by German, Austrian and Swiss tourists and waiters speaking in the Teutonic tongue.
So I need your help. Where do you go for information? What are your favourite, or least favourite, guidebooks? Where are their failings and strengths? Who can help me work out where I should be sleeping tonight, in a small town outside Ljubljana?














