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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.”