A travel guide is one of the most useful tools that can take us on our weekend getaways, our summer holidays or our most ambitious travel. Even though we see now all over the Internet, or we unload on mobile apps varied to help us organize our visits, the paper guides remain a classic.
More or less, we all have our favorites and we all have a list of the essential things you should have a good travel guide. At the end of the day, all include several basic aspects (introduction to the country or city, typical visits, places to eat or shop, a basic explanation of the operation of its public transportation system, etc.), and is in the way we treat them , or how to go beyond them, where we can find the ideal guide. Journal editors have developed Traveler’s our list of 10 essential that ideal guide should have.
1. That is up to date
This may seem a bit obvious, but if you travel to China in 2016 with a guide whose last edition was published in 2012, maybe we find that there have been some changes in the places we go to visit, as they have closed or entry it has been restricted since. It is true that the development of these books takes time, if you want to do well, but have a guide as current as possible is always an important point.
2. What about the hotels WiFi?
One of the most common disappointments when we arrived at a hotel is that the Wi-Fi does not work as their website says or explains our guide. Depending on the country and the hotel, we can have free WiFi only in reception, throughout the hotel, only for an hour, after registration and payment for minutes … Given that we travel more and more connected, which guides travel offer us real and proven performance of the networks WiFi’s public and hotel information is a very important aspect.
3. Social conventions
An important part of travel is to meet locals. The interaction with them, even if only to buy a bottle of water, an integral part of the experience of visiting another country and you have to know how to behave socially not mess up and have a hard time. In India, for example, it is common for a person you just met asks you directly what you do, where you studied or are married / a; It is your way to know how they can talk to you, if peer to peer or a more formal way. If a travel guide tells you all that, you will save some misunderstandings.
4. Where I can go that is not full of tourists?
A guide that no essential detail to see in a city sites, is not a good guide. But those sites, of course, are the most popular and those that are always crowded with other tourists like us. What if we do not want to have to beat us to enter St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, for example? An interesting addition to these books are tips on other places worth visiting and are less frequented by tourists. If, say, we do not support a kilometer – long queue to enter the Prado Museum in Madrid, the guide advises us to spend another less saturated, but equally interesting, as a museum the Romanticism, you can offer an option to consider.
5. What must expect much in the Empire State?
A little attached to this is the next essential, for us, you must have the ideal travel guide: information of what to expect to enter certain sites. It can be very useful to be told that if you happen to travel to New York during the week of Thanksgiving (guilty), the queue to climb the Empire State at night can spend leisurely time, for example. Or you explain that you do not get your hopes to see like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre: is always surrounded by people taking photographs.
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6. The ticket prices
The other important when organizing our visits to museums, monuments and other attractions aspect is how much it costs to enter them. But, really. The guide will specify what it costs to enter the Forbidden City in Beijing is very relevant to the organization of travel information. And so if we want to see a particular event. As previously mentioned New York, it is very useful that the guide tell you, for example, an input Broadway can easily spend $ 100 (although there is the option of last minute deals TKTS).
7. Advice street food
All guides always include a section on where to eat. The most common is that they are restaurants, some more chic and others a bit more popular, but sometimes they miss street food recommendations, which in Southeast Asia is a very important aspect of the trip. Not only specific dishes, but places or positions, if we want to be more specific. Of course, here too there consider certain recommendations for testing local culinary specialties will not pass bill to our stomach.
8. Local Purchase
“Local Purchase” is a slogan that is being implemented on many cities to encourage smaller against the push of supermarkets shops. Discover these shops can also be one of the pleasures of travel, and a guide includes them among its recommendations where do our shopping helps enrich the stay; they are not all department stores and luxury shops, but there is room for more local “neighborhood”.
9. Cooking tips firsthand
Another essential more food? Yes, because it is one of the fundamental parts of every trip. And because sometimes it is also one of the most neglected aspects of the guidelines. Not enough to make a list of the most famous restaurants in a city; if, in addition, it is noted that the author of the guide has tried firsthand, and recommends what to ask them , and raises many points. They can tell, for example, that if you go to Cafe Majestic Porto, who ask their mixed sandwich (from “queijo and cold cuts”), or can guide on how to order the dishes at Jing Fong, a classic dim sum restaurant in Chinatown New Yorker in which the service is going at full speed.
10. But this site worth?
Sometimes travel guides include recommendations for places to visit that, at best, they do not deserve so much. It can be very useful if you have that if you’re going to Palencia, you walk through the town of Támara de Campos to see its spectacular cathedral church of San Hipolito Real, but also is useful to you indicate that there is nothing more to do there (yes, the church is worth a visit). Not everywhere there are plenty of very interesting visits haceer, and rightly guides are honest about it.
How do you see yourselves? What other things añadiríais essential for a Guide was the ideal?