It’s that time again! Gotta bring out my carry-on from storage, and start calculating what to bring and how to pack. I have quite the hectic little schedule coming up in the next week and a half, from Paris to Switzerland to Amsterdam, which all necessitates meticulous planning and mapping!
Due to the fact that I’m super Type A, I love to plan as much as possible before my trips. I find the rewards to be worth all of the sweat and efforts. Going to a major city such as Paris is not quite the same thing as showing up to Aruba, meaning – you need to have a good sense of where you want to go, the lay of the land, make the appropriate reservations, acknowledge the store hours (this is Europe after all), etc etc. In fact, some of my worst trips (Paris included) have been quite disastrous, precisely because I hadn’t put in the time in advance – which led to tons of fighting with hubby, but that’s another story.
So, below are some of my favorite bespoke resources:
1) I *love* Wallpaper Guides. They make them now for almost every major city in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia. There’s even Wallpaper Mumbai and Perth! The small little guide contains some fabulous photos and references to hotels, restaurants, shops, and nearby getaways. It’s short, eclectic, concise, and totally to my taste.
2) Luxe City Guides. This is another nice little pocket-size guide that I think does an excellent job of pointing you to some great hot-spots. I also like the humor they inject in some of their descriptions. I first found this guide via Luxe New York. Having lived in Manhattan for 5-6 years at that stage, I was quite impressed by the info it contained on my own city. Note to self, always check out what a specific guide has to say about your city. If you find that the given advice is solid and spot-on, chances are you’re in good hands for foreign selections abroad as well!!! (And vice versa).
3) Another one that I recently stumbled upon is Taschen Guides (of the art book publisher Taschen). Unfortunately, I think their city choices are more limited (the ones I have are for Paris, Berlin, New York, and London). Again, they come in nice, cute mini-sized booklets. I like these, as they separate out Shops, Hotels, and Resto/Cafes into individual booklets. An added touch – the guides also point you to the nearest metro/subway stop, with snapshots of what they call the “X Factor.”
4) I find the Knopf Mapguides to be also quite helpful (particularly geographically speaking). It really depends on the way you orientate yourself on a trip. In my case, I like that they divvy each section by neighborhood, providing you with the lo-down for every area. I find that the guide really clicks with the way my brain functions (hubby disagrees, but then again, we work differently). There’s also a nice aggregate layout of the entire city at the front of the guide. Again, the key here is that I find both the size and the layout of the guide to be super user-friendly.
There must be a trend here! Maybe I just loathe bulky & heavy travel guides (who doesn’t?!). They are nice in concept, but incredibly impractical.
Of course, I rely on tons of other resources too (i.e., Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, Fodor’s, Eyewitness Travel, Moon Travel Guides, etc). I find them, on the whole, to be a bit more generic (though great for first-time users and sometimes the only resource you can find for a given destination). At any rate, I assumed that you probably knew about those already! Next time, I’ll share with you some of my favorite media/magazine/newspaper tips for travel!! (Hint: I heart Departures Magazine).
