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You can get reliable, useful information from guidebooks. Yet, some are better than others and often, it’s important to know what you’re looking for when you travel, what your goals are and what your pocketbook can handle.

As I often tell my fellow Traveling Paupers, a guidebook is just that— a guide. Not a set of rules that are fixed in stone. Never let any guidebook chain you down to a fixed itinerary. Be adventurous, add your own mix of wonder and discovery to the trip you plan, and use your guidebook as an introduction to the locale, not the final arbiter of what is valuable.

That being said, I’d like to explore some of the guidebooks I’ve found useful in making trips around the world. It is, by no means, a comprehensive listing of all the books available to you. But this sampling should give you a very good starting point to discover what travel books can offer.

The Michelin Red Guides

Provide detailed information about European hotels and restaurants, while the Green Guides focus on European art, history, and places of interest. They tend to be best suited to travel that isn’t too budget conscious. Upscale.

The Fielding Guides

Provides a candid, well written guide especially good at finding off-beat, unusual destinations. I recommend them to Paupers that wish to travel off the beaten track. Unique.

Fodor’s Travel Guides

Recently celebrating their 60th birthday with almost 100 titles in the Gold Line series. They emphasize the West, but the Fodor’s Guides cover countries though- out the world. They provide good historical and cultural information as well as practical recommendations. I like it for those who wish to stay on the middle of the road. Perennial Bestseller.

The Frommer Series

The old $5. A Day series has become the $40 a Day series. They offer touring guides, city guides, and special editions. While emphasizing Europe and the United States they take pains to describe restaurants, hotels and nightlife as well. Budget.

The Lonely Planet Series

Called, simply enough, the LP, they have earned a great reputation for worldwide budget and independent travel. There are five series offered, but my favorite is the On A Shoestring guide, coving everything from a specific country, to a region or continent for the low budget traveler. Eclectic.

The Travel Handbook Series

This series contains more than 50 books from Moon Publications and are updated annually. That’s their greatest value in my judgment. Contemporary.

Europe Through The Back Door

Authored by Rick Steves. You get an itinerary and “must see” list of sights for limited European trips. A no brainer.

The Rough Guides

Focuses on college-age travelers in Europe. Much the same flavor as you will find in the LP series; irreverent and directed to the budget conscious. Street smart.

A good guidebook makes travel vastly easier. Use them even when you’re only traveling in your arm chair. The best spark your imagination and lead you to unknown discoveries and adventure.

Victor K. Pryles©2005 - http://www.paupertravel.com

When ever we are on a trip to a place, we need some guidance about that place. For this we need a tourist guide who can help us, tell us about the interested places, sites and many more information. But sometime these people charge so much that it will not be possible for a common man to afford it. What will happen if the tourist guide will be available of free of cost. Will it help the common man? The answer is easy to this question.

Same free tourist guides are available in California and they assist the visitors at every point of time. You can easily find these guides on internet. These guides are full of information about the beautiful state of California. While researching California, you may be curious to find out the best lodging, dining, transport, and sight seeing options. You can get the information from these guides. They will assist you every where.

The tourist guides help us where ever we need them. While we are on a trip we bother much about the lodging, dining and transportation along with the sites to see. If a travel guide will not be there, our journey will become full of the difficulties and we will not enjoy fully. The guide saves out precious time and provides us more interesting information about various historic places. In California, which is known to be a golden place and full of sites, these guides are available free. You can contact them and ask them for the places of your interest. All you have to do is to tell them about your interests and they will provide the details and make your trip very easy. These guides are very professional and are very experienced. They are full of energy and joy. They will be with you on the whole trip and provide you the detailed informations.

It’ s fun traveling without plans. No tours, no guides. Just travel alone, explore and discover new things that come your way. In planned tours you don’t generally get to the other side of the trip. You are always safe, no adventures, just see, rest and go back home.

Most people like to be safe and with guides throughout the tour, but some exceptions love to travel without lots of people around them. Just friends and you alone, without guides. These kinda people need MAPS! They take the help of their maps and go and explore the whole city, state or country. Maps are essential.

You use maps you need to study how to study maps. But nowadays, you don’t need to keep maps that get old and torn because you can find first class travel directions and maps online. You can search for maps on the net. If you carry a laptop, you should always have your Google Earth software with you which is free to download.

You can find first class travel directions and maps online using Google Eath. It provides you with maps of the whole world. Not just two dimensional maps of places, it also provides you with 3d maps. You can see the 3 dimensional images of the place you are in. 3d images which look like the replica of the real world can be of amazing help. To learn more about Google Earth, click the link on the bottom of the article.

Or if you do not carry a laptop, you can just visit go to a nearby internet cafe and visit maps.google.com. You can take some 2 dimensional maps of here and print them out but you will not be able to take out 3d pics. You can also download Google Earth for free at the internet cafe. It takes few minutes or seconds to download.

Many people love traveling to various tourist destinations during holiday seasons and vacations. A plethora of options are available to travel consumers from many different travel resorts, hotel companies and travel agencies. One such popular option is the all inclusive vacation resorts.

Many resorts and hotels in America offer all-inclusive vacations during the holiday season. As the name suggests, these resorts offer a fabulous package inclusive of all charges and fees for all the amenities provided in these resorts. Many people have no idea about the exact service offerings at these all-inclusive resorts. Some travel related websites have dedicated teams who research and survey the market and compile guides for prospective vacationers. Various travel related magazines as well as travel related television channels constantly update their readers and viewers with the latest information on the travel front. Most of these guides are free of cost while some may be charged.

Vacationers need to identify their needs and preferences before selecting a vacation destination. For example, couples would have different needs than family members. Couples are most likely to choose a romantic vacation spot with a beautiful ambience and peaceful atmosphere whereas family vacationers prefer fun filled amusement resorts with activities and amenities suitable for all members of the family.

All-inclusive resorts typically offer a consolidated package that includes all charges for meals and drinks throughout a person’s stay, return airfares, lodging and accommodation, on site entertainment and activities, gratuities and all applicable taxes. Such packages are very convenient for leisure travelers as after selecting a resort and paying the package amount, they can forget about all kinds of hassling logistics of the holiday. These are taken care of by the resort management thus facilitating the guests to enjoy a stress free vacation.

All-inclusive resorts also offer competitive deals as they combine all the charges and thereby manage to give a discount on their services. This works out cheap as compared to taking all these facilities individually and from different providers. It is advisable for vacationers to refer to free travel guides online to know more about all-inclusive resorts and the packages available.

Air charter guides offer definite resources for those who wish to use the Internet to book air charter services. They are offer comprehensive coverage of the aircraft services around the world, and they keep passengers updated about the recent developments and air related travel business that will help them plan their next air charter trip. They also provide the latest information on business and pleasure aircrafts.

Some air charter guides have their own publication. These publications keep charter trip travelers current on national and international charter operators and brokers all over the world. Prices are usually higher for air charter services, but with the option of online air charter booking provided by the guides, chartering traveling is more accessible. Online booking allows charters to have one hundred percent capacity. Thus, the number of charters increases and the prices go down.

The air charter guides also provide information that tells you how to plan and book an air charter trip. It gives information on other related air charter amenities like the special services offered to traveling celebrities, charter brokers, air ambulance providers and information on air cargo. There are bi-yearly publications that provide vital information and serve as an indispensable tool to both charter customers with no prior experience, as well as frequent charter fliers.

Air charter guides are of great importance in the travel trade industry. They also offer air industry professionals a wide range of printed and online solutions that help them to promote their companies and services offered to qualified buyers.

Discount travel guides are individuals or companies that assist people who travel. They offer good discount on many amenities and charge a minimal fee for their services. Travelers love travel guides because of the services they provide. A traveler doesn’t have to worry about a thing when in the hands of a travel guide or service, because the guide does it all. The quality is always excellent and the prices are always reasonable.

If you need to travel on the weekend (weekend travel is always expensive), a travel guide will promptly work on getting you the best available rates possible. Because they maintain good relations with many of the airlines, they purchase blocks of tickets and sell them to their faithful customers at a discount ? even on the weekend. They also assist the with other travel related issues like insurance, rail passes, car rentals etc. They have packages for senior citizens who wish to travel, offering them a discount that will save seniors from twenty to fifty percent.

The discount travel guides have their offices in all countries. This helps in proper communication and avoids any kind of delay that the customer or client has. The discount travel guides also arrange sightseeing tours and make alternate arrangements for travel food and rest during these sight-seeing trips. They also give advice about shopping in certain cities and give great advice about what stores and markets are the best to visit.

If you would like to find out more about the services of a discount travel guide, go to the Internet and search for “discount travel guides.”

Last minute travel is a new trend that is cheap, surprisingly convenient, even fun.Not only more thrilling and adventurous, it can also be a great way to surprise someone.Whether you’re hopping the 49th parallel for the weekend or want to –˜live by the seat of your pants’, booking last minute travel is exhilarating and fun (of course, provided you have an understanding boss who lets you take off with a couple days notice or as much as two weeks notice) The proliferation of web sites dedicated to last minute travel shows just how widespread this form of travel has become.The online arena is a global marketplace of time-sensitive, just released travel and entertainment offers, and there are usually terrific last minute deals available.You can check the airlines website, or major travel booking sites to look for the best deals for yourself.Taking the time to find the best deal that you can from last minute travel is definitely worth it.The enhanced accessibility of last minute specials via the Internet as well as low prices on last minute travel makes it easier than ever.One way to book last minute travel is to join a last minute club.Although last minute travel is more affordable than ever, there are a few common truths to finding good rates on travel no matter when you book.Of course, you can always be ready by keeping a small travel bag packed.So last minute travel is just as easy as a trip planned in advance.You have peace of mind that last minute travel is always an option while still being cost effective.