Travel Books

JetLag RocknRoll tells you the best places to get your hands dirty, fill your feedbag, wet your whistle, and shake your tail feather. So why would you need some other travel source? Because maybe you’ve dreamed of slurping clam chowder out of a sourdough bread bowl at Pier 39, getting nearly can-canned in the face by a Moulin Rouge dancer, and/or boxing with a kangaroo in the Australian outback. Or maybe you just really need to find the nearest medical clinic to have that weird, growing pustule examined. Sorry, these are things you won’t find at JLRNR.

Luckily, that kind of information is a Google search or Barnes & Noble trip away. Hundreds upon thousands of websites compete for your mouseclicks while dozens of travel book series vie for your hard-earned cash. Both sources have their pros and cons. Travel books are generally portable and easy to peruse, but they cost money and are updated (though not necessarily thoroughly) every one or two years. Travel websites, on the other hand, are mostly free, are not restricted by page count, and have the potential to be updated frequently, but their content sometimes lacks polish, their navigation design and slow page-loading can suck valuable hours from your life, and the information you’d like to take with you doesn’t magically jump from the screen into your hand.

It would take a lifetime to review all the travel sites out there, so at the very least here’s an overview of the more-popular travel book series, all of which I’ve used to some extent.

Eyewitness: Glossy, beautifully illustrated guides to popular, photogenic destinations in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Because they’re heavy and bulky, they’re best used for pre-trip daydreaming at home. (For whatever reason, I’ve only ever seen German families—usually the father with his fannypack—cart these around.)
Fodor’s: Mostly high-end guides to popular, accessible destinations in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. In addition to basic tourist information are random essays on culture/history/whatever and handy walking tours. Geared toward people who stay at hotels with concierges and valets—and actually use them.
Footprint: Ok, I lied. This is the one series mentioned here that I haven’t used, but I somehow have copies of New Zealand and Dublin that I hope to use in the near future, though preferably not on the same trip. These “handbooks,” as they’re called, cover parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Australasia, and Central/South America. They remind me of the Rough Guides, but with more outdoor-activity listings.
Frommer’s: Modest-budget and family-friendly guides to popular, “safe” destinations in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and Australasia. Good walking tours, and their service listings are a bit more off-beat than Fodor’s; one of their series is even called the Irreverent Guides.
Hidden: A cross between Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and Rough, covering mostly North American destinations. The off-the-beaten-track finds marked in the margins can be pretty cool.
Insiders’: Guides to U.S. destinations famed for their outdoor adventures.
Insight: Thick, slick, magazine-like guides to destinations in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Though they contain walking tours with corresponding maps, the design makes the tours hard to follow while actually walking. Plus they’re kinda heavy. A good pre-trip planning source.
Let’s Go: Budget-minded guides covering the most-popular spring- and/or summer-break destinations in Europe, Asia, the Americas, Middle East, Africa, and Australasia. Geared toward students and backpackers. I’d confirm the quality of the hostel/motel/hotel with another source before booking, though.
Lonely Planet: Budget-minded guides covering the most destinations, from the adventurous to the mundane, on each continent, including Antarctica. Good for long-term travelers living out of a bag/backpack or two. The maps, which note medical clinics, banks, and grocery stores in addition to sights, hotels, restaurants, and everything else mentioned in the book, are a godsend. If I don’t feel like taking the guide with me, I’ll at the very least xerox the maps and their corresponding legends.
Michelin: Known for its tires, a bouncy mascot, and hoity-toity European restaurant/hotel guides (the Red Guides), Michelin also publishes the Green Guides, focusing on France and select areas in Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Good for history buffs, boring for others.
Moon: Budget-minded guides to mostly North and South America, with a dash of Asia and Europe. Geared toward outdoorsy types.
Rick Steves: Budget-minded, sensible guides to popular destinations in Europe. Best for travelers with tight schedules (the guides only include must-see spots) who don’t mind running into other Americans wielding a copy of the same guide. Since Rick leads tours to Europe every year, I trust his lodging recommendations to be clean and serviceable; too bad they’re often full.
Rough: Utilitarian guides to destinations in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Good for all budgets. The bus/train/ferry travel details at the end of each chapter are great for plotting out multi-city trips. To keep iPhones, BlackBerries, and PDAs busy, Rough also publishes several e-books (Directions, Podscrolls) and digital maps.
Time Out: Originally just a London weekly, Time Out now publishes a small selection of slick magazine-like guides to cosmopolitan destinations in Europe, Asia, and North America (essentially, places where mojitos and/or martinis are just a snap of the fingers away). Geared toward the hip and fashionable in all budget categories.

The following print guides also have useful online content in case you have no money, have no time to browse in the bookstore, or live far away from a library: Frommer’s (walking tours), Fodor’s (hotel listings allow readers to comment), Time Out, Rough Guides (although hard to navigate), Rick Steves (not much from the guides themselves, but plenty of time- and money-saving tips), Lonely Planet, and Michelin (allows you to type in a location anywhere in Europe and spits out nearby sights/restaurants/hotels as well as marked maps).