New guides for summer vacation planning

REVIEWS BY ALISON HOOD

If this year's vacation budget can't quite stretch to European odysseys or exotic backcountry safaris, you might get the best bang for your trekking buck by exploring your own backyard—or volunteering to "work" in someone else's. Five new travel guides explore the cities, small towns and sights of North America, and are loaded with wallet-friendly, intriguing travel options guaranteed to satisfy your wanderlust.

As a follow-up to her hugely popular 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, travel writer Patricia Schultz narrows her focus (while not skimping on pages) in 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die. This doorstop of a book offers access to big cities, small towns, mainstream attractions and offbeat oddities. Everything is here, from how to sample Southwest cuisine to experiencing a polar bear safari, in this comprehensive, well-written and superbly researched guide to the North American continent (though the section on Canada is considerably smaller). Along with the requisite practical information, Schultz offers thorough historical narrative and travel tips that reveal the best times to travel, how to avoid "tourist traps" and where to go for "locals only" information. The print and photos are small, but the breadth of travel ideas and experiences is gigantic. Even the most avid traveler would be well challenged to take advantage of such an ambitious itinerary before shuffling off this mortal coil. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

    1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die
    By Patricia Schultz
    Workman, $19.95
    992 pages
    ISBN 9780761136910
    Also available in hardcover

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Stops along the way

If you're going to San Francisco, you'll definitely want to take along a copy of the sleekly hip RealCity/San Francisco by Kristine Carber et al. This compact guide, which promises to put you "ahead of the crowd," is written by locals and logically organized into four sections: a city "primer" that gives an overview of San Francisco and Bay Area lifestyles, top attractions and major events; eight themed chapters of listings covering eating, shopping, drinks, sights and stays (and cross-referenced to maps); a handy street finder; and indices. Artful four-color photography adds further interest to the "tell it like it is" text and amusing, informative sidebars. And you'll be up to speed on real-time San Francisco because RealCity/SF is linked to a website that keeps careful track of what's hot and what's not in the City by the Bay. RealCity guides are also available for Chicago and New York.


You'll never be bored—or totally broke—in Boston with humor columnist Kris Frieswick's cagey travel guide, The Cheap Bastard's Guide to Boston: Secrets of Living the Good Life for Free!, in hand. A self-proclaimed, second-generation "cheap bastard," she shows you how to fall in line with Boston's Puritan tradition of living "on the smallest amount of money possible." Boston is an expensive city, Frieswick opines, but the deals and handouts are there if you know where to look (and she certainly does). Three wittily written sections cover Boston's entertainments (from music and theater to lectures, comedy and dance); the necessities of living (from free food to low-cost pet care); and how to explore Boston on the cheap. Though this manual contains no maps, it is a bona fide blueprint for a budget visit to Beantown.


It can be captivating to wander leisurely, temporarily lost, in an unfamiliar place. But if time is limited, and you want to hit a city's hotspots quickly and easily, Knopf MapGuides really deliver. An information-rich, city map series that demystifies major burgs from Bangkok to Boston, these are fit-in-your-pocket, durable guides featuring fold-out maps, color photography and lists of must-see sights for dining, imbibing, museum- and monument-hopping, and shopping. Knopf MapGuides: Boston, by Mollie Chen, will have you bopping around town like a local. Six easily decipherable maps (plus an overall city map with four pages of basic visitor information) orient travelers to the layout, flavor, history and highlights of Boston's unique districts; each map is accompanied by a district-specific "little black book" of bars, eateries, shopping, attractions and entertainments for all budgets. Site descriptions are evocative and succinct; the maps use a clear grid-referencing system; and the guide thoughtfully includes a city transportation map, a list of selected hotels and a thematic index to street names and sites.


Try a new approach

Tired of your regular, humdrum summer getaway and ready to try something completely different? Travel expert Pam Grout's wonderfully informative, thought-provoking The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life opens the door to "life-enriching vacations" in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These are "experience-driven" trips that span four categories: arts and crafts getaways, volunteer vacations, brain retreats and wellness escapes. Grout claims that any of the 100 included vacations have "the potential to seriously change your life." She encourages an adventurous attitude and urges readers to ditch their cell phones, BlackBerrys and to-do lists in favor of a vacation that could enhance creativity, expand heart and mind, and challenge the body. You might opt for clown school with Marin County's karmic trickster, Wavy Gravy. Or you could wield a hammer with Habitat for Humanity, follow your bliss at New York's Omega Institute, or study wolves and geysers at Yellowstone National Park. The choices are many and varied, the program descriptions inviting, and the sidebars, factoids and travel tips are useful and entertaining. Grout's guide to unusual journeys is sure to have you up and out of the backyard hammock, on your way to the adventure of a lifetime.


Now that's a great idea

A nifty, chunky, pocket-sized guide, The Smart Traveler's Passport: 399 Tips from Seasoned Travelers, edited by Erik Torkells, offers a wealth of travel-related tips from the silly to the sublime. Cleverly tricked out to look like a real passport, the book includes nuggets of travel advice collected from the readers of Budget Travel and Budget Travel Online through the magazine's popular "20 Tips" column. These are organized into nine chapters that cover trip planning, packing, travel-time, safety, lodging, transport, spending, sightseeing and connecting with fellow travelers and family. From suggestions for using Ziploc bags to an unusual use for a Frisbee (now I know you'll want to buy this book!), both savvy and novice travelers will find all sorts of information that will help ease the discomforts—and enhance the delights—of any journey.


Alison Hood's Bay Area "backyard" includes three national parks, which she explores on a regular basis.

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