Going to extremes: From micro-guides to lavish wishbooks

REVIEWS BY MICHELLE JONES

Before your frequent flier miles or unused vacation days expire, reach for your passport and get going. The new travel books range from mini-wonders to hefty coffee table volumes and offer something for every kind of traveler.

Everywhere, not much time

There is a certain armchair-traveler appeal to Lonely Planet's The Perfect Day, in which LP contributors (see the mug shots at the end of the book) each get a page to tell how they'd spend a day in their favorite city. "If the sun is obscured and the breeze blizzard-like, that sucks but at least tickets are easier to come by," one says of a day in Chicago, adding, "I order a hot dog and Old Style beer and sigh as the Cubs get clobbered." With that characteristic honesty and irreverence, the entries serve as excellent starting points should one find oneself with only a day to spend in a sprawling international metropolis or far-flung outpost. Each city is highlighted with a photo—a landmark, items on sale in a local market, a tram, locals—and concentrated "city highlights," with information on a museum, restaurant or activity. A common theme seems to be taking a leisurely approach to the day; there's no zipping around trying to see as many sights as possible. Instead, the suggestions include a good place for morning coffee, a stroll and a fine evening meal followed by gathering with friends. Perfect indeed.


Where's the party?

"Festivals can be the worst time for traveling to—and staying in—the place in which the event is held," according to World Party: The Rough Guide to the World's Best Festivals. Exactly. Nevertheless, intrepid travelers will find everything they need to know about experiencing some of the wildest, most colorful and strangest events all over the globe in this comprehensive guide. World Party is arranged by continent (and conveniently indexed by country and festival name), with each featured festival described in an overview, along with sidebars on the history of the event and other interesting tidbits. For the famous running of the bulls in Pamplona, for example, you can read about Hemingway's role in popularizing participation as well as a first-hand report from an injured survivor. A "doing" page includes info on lodging, transportation, dining and contacts. Smaller festivals (Serbia and Montenegro's Exit Festival, Thailand's Songkhran) are summarized at the end of each region's section. The best part of this book, aside from the characteristic Rough Guide tone, may be the succinct summary of each highlighted event: "fireworks, bonfires and roaming bands of hammer- and leek-wielding lunatics" describes Portugal's Festa do São João; while Edinburgh's Hogmanay is prefaced by "The rain may have turned to sleet, but there's no better setting for a New Year's knees-up." If you start this book thinking you wouldn't want to be anywhere near such madness, you might change your mind before you reach the end.


Size is everything

The tiny Eyewitness Travel Pocket Map & Guides look as though a harried traveler accidentally put a full-sized Eyewitness guide through the laundry and ended up with these pocket- or purse-sized wonders. The Barcelona guide divides the city into three sections—Montjuic, Old Town and Eixample—and includes the usual mix of sights and eateries, along with an overview of the region's cuisine, complete with glossary. A "Survival Guide" at the back of the book provides information on money, communication and other essentials, while a foldout map shows metro routes and includes a street index. Since this is billed as "everything you need for a perfect day out," you won't find information on lodging; this is suggested as a companion to the full-sized Barcelona & Catalonia guide. However, the editors manage to squeeze in info on day trips and the Catalonian region.


For those who want one exhaustive guide to where they're going, Fodor's new Essential line is the ticket. Fodor's Essential Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice & the Top Spots in Between packs everything you need for a successful Italian sojourn, including information on dining, lodging, sightseeing; itinerary planning; a language and menu guide; and even overviews of the region's rich legacy of architecture and art. Museums, ruins, cathedrals, coffee shops and scenic walks are given in-depth profiles by locals and accomplished travelers alike. Helpful maps and diagrams are sprinkled throughout, with a full-sized pullout map tucked into to the back cover.


Going in style

If you've been in a bookstore or museum gift shop recently, you've probably seen the simple, colorful jackets of the Wallpaper City Guides. These small volumes are aimed at the kind of well-groomed, well-traveled people who read Wallpaper magazine and are accordingly style-oriented. This can feel a little lacking if you're into historical sights and museums, but if a gorgeous hotel room, wonderful shops and the latest architectural stunner define your travel plans—these books are for you. Copenhagen, London and Istanbul and 17 other cities are given a lavish photographic treatment, while well-written text offers insightful glimpses into each city's character.


Travel + Leisure The 100 Best Trips is really not a guidebook at all, but a hardbound collection of pieces and photographs from the magazine. The dream destinations and theme trips include shopping in Paris, Christmas in St. Petersburg, a booklover's trip to Wales and celebrating Argentine pride in Buenos Aires. Perhaps the coolest aspect of The 100 Best Trips? The inclusion of pieces on winter travel to cold places, certainly an overlooked pleasure.


Trips of a lifetime

If you're big on sumptuous photography and itineraries to the far corners of the globe, you'll love The New Traveler's Atlas, a sort of wishbook, reference book and coffee table book all rolled into one. Written by a collection of journalists, tour leaders and historians, the book includes stunning photos, an historical and cultural overview and a brief collection of facts about each stop on the selective tour. Taking readers from Scottish isles to the Victoria Falls to Tibet, this book is a great place to begin one's pre-trip research.


Literary itineraries

If you've ever longed to walk in the footsteps of Hugo and Hemingway, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dante and Yeats, then Bloom's Literary Guides should be your go-to series for prowling the literary haunts (both real and imagined) of Dublin, London, Paris and Rome. Series editor and literary critic Harold Bloom (who also is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University) lends his considerable scholarship to these portable, information-packed guides, which explore four fabled cities that sheltered many of Western civilization's leading literary lights.

Each of the guidebooks contain Bloom's erudite essay on the entwinement of place in Western literature, as well as his introductory remarks on that city's major literary figures. Easy-to-read and entertaining, these books blend practical travel information with a compact historical, cultural, literary and geographic overview for each city discussed: to peruse any one of these guides is to take a mini-course in humanities. Though short on navigable maps, and definitely not a source for the minutiae of travel planning (such as lodging and restaurants), the series is replete with references to those authors, literary works, characters, places and things celebrated in Western literature and culture.

Further reading lists, a "Places of Interest" appendix, and lists of relevant websites are also included. These fascinating guides might inspire would-be travelers to re-read their favorite literature—or pick up a classic tale for the very first time.

—ALISON HOOD


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