Posts Tagged ‘guide books’
Mar 13th, 2007
Moleskine City Notebooks
I’m a big fan of Moleskine notebooks. I’ve been using them for my travels since my second trip to France in ’03. Apart from the large size I used as a journal, I also bought a pocket size to use as my trip organizer. I filled it with addresses of shops I wanted to visit, restaurants I wanted to try and hotels and hostels in which to sleep. I took notes along the way of places of interest and the names of artists I discovered in museums. I did one for New York that I’ve used on two or three trips, one for Eastern Europe, and even a small one for London when we went for 5 days.
So when Moleskine announced their new City Notebooks I was very intrigued and excited. Now, after months of trying, I finally managed to get my hands on the one for Paris. They are not quite yet in wide distribution and the two places in town that have them were always out of the Paris edition. I eventually had to order it through Powell’s.
If you haven’t seen these yet their a brilliant little package. Included are maps of the city, street indexes, metro maps, blank pages for notes, and tabbed sections for restaurants, bars, shops, people, and various blank tabs for your own interests. One of the best bits, though, is the transparent sticky sheets that fit on the map pages so you can trace your routes or mark place of interest. I have all ready transferred all the things I marked on my Wayfaring map to my notebook maps and have also filled it with my own spots to check out.
Moleskine also has versions coming out for U.S. cities and I’m sure I’ll pick up the New York book, and maybe the San Francisco one as well. Hell, I might even get the Seattle one just for kicks.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some more general country books as we rarely only visit one city on a trip.
Posted in Books, Travel Planning | No Comments
Feb 5th, 2007
On Travel Festivals and Planning
Twice a year Rick Steve’s hosts travel festivals at his headquarters (located a convenient 30 minutes away from us in Edmonds, WA). Now mostly these are put together to help sell his tours, but one can glean a lot of useful information and ideas even if one as no intention of taking a tour.
This was our third or fourth time going to the festival, and was by far the most helpful. We attended two classes, one on France presented by Steve Smith, the coauthor of the Rick Steves’ France books, and one was an intro to french for travelers.
While I didn’t really learn anything in either class, the France class was nice because I got to see pictures of most of the places I’ve been reading about. I think Irene probably got more out of them than me because she’s a bit behind on the reading and this class helped motivate her to start reading the books.
After the class though, thanks to our friend G, who is an editor at Rick Steves, I was able to talk to Smith himself and run my itinerary by him to see what he thought. I was a little worried that I was trying to cram too much in and that my expectations were a bit unrealistic, but he reassured me that my plan was indeed doable. He also offered a few suggestions for me to mull over. I don’t know that I’ll change anything because I’m pretty confident in my planning, though, and the reasons for scheduling things they way I did.
In other news, I booked our tickets for our flight from Nice back to Paris on EasyJet. It was a little more expensive than I was expecting, but still only cost $80, which, considering the time it’s saving us, is a bargain.
Posted in Books, France, Travel Planning | No Comments
Oct 5th, 2006
MTV Guides
I saw an MTV Europe
I wonder who the target audience for these things could be? College frat boys and Girls Gone Wild?
Posted in Travel Tools | No Comments
Jun 8th, 2006
Pod Guides
There are a number of different guides available for downloading and storing on your iPod to make your travels better. Some of them use the Notes section of your iPod, and some use the Photos section. Here are a few that I have come across:
Rough Guides Podscrolls—I just found this one today and downloaded the guides for Amsterdam, Paris and New York. It uses the Photos section of the iPod, so you have to create albums in iPhoto and sync them through iTunes. Only a few cities are offered at this time.
Pod CityGuides—This one has a ton of cities on offer and stores them in the Notes section, so they take up relatively little space. Pod CityGuides updates frequently too, so it’s a good idea to check the site to make sure you have the most current version before you travel.
iSubwayMaps.com—The guy that runs this site has chopped up subway maps from various cities and formatted them to fit on the iPod screen. There are versions for both the iPod Photo and iPod with video. I’m not sure how useful they are in the field as it’s hard to get a sense of overall position, but if you know where you need to go you may be all right. Great idea anyway.
There are more of course. I know that the Seattle Weekly offers a dining guide for the iPod and I’ve heard tell of one that lists pizza places in New York. Or you could always make your own, of course.
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