So you’re planning a trip.
For voyagers looking to wander off the beaten track, it can be a challenge finding the right travel guides to navigate you towards those truly unique, undiscovered, or locals-only spots. Pre-travel homework is critical to making the most of the time and money you’ve already committed to the trip, and who knows when you’ll have the chance to come back? A cautionary tale: travelers who cut corners in advance of a trip to Marrakech, for example, may not realize that the medina’s riads are by far the most charming accommodations in town, thereby ending up at a soulless chain hotel instead. Regret.
To save you from the pitfalls of misguided planning, here are some of our proven strategies for seeing everything a location has to offer, starting from must-sees and then breaking away from the herd to reach the hippest and best kept secrets on your travels.
ESTABLISHED TRAVEL GUIDES
An intuitive starting point when planning your next adventure. Authoritative voices like those found in Lonely Planet, Rick Steves, DK Eyewitness Travel, Fodor’s and Rough Guides tend towards a traditional approach to travel, equipping you with important data like the best time to hit up that museum, entrance fees, and sound travel practices specific to your destination. Another heavy hitter to be consulted is The Telegraph’s Travel Destinations, available online and via the app, and boasting a comprehensive list of things to do, see and consume. Consider beginning your research with established guides such as these for a robust overview that can form the skeleton of your travel outline. Off-roading is great, but you can hardly go to Paris for the first time and skip the Eiffel Tower because it’s “too mainstream.”
ALTERNATIVE TRAVEL GUIDES
A diversified approach to travel planning is the best way to ensure that no authentic restaurant, breath-taking gallery or picturesque vista falls through the cracks. Consider these sources for a fresh experience.
This recently launched web platform is a member-based community and multi-city guide curated by the artists and creatives that fill its ranks. Here you’ll find an art director’s favorite places to dine in Stockholm, a photographer’s selection of shops in NYC, and where to go for a night out in Edinburgh according to an award-winning illustrator. You can filter by city or navigate from each creative’s profile to access the recommendations. To join, snag an invite from an existing member or apply by creating a profile.
Cereal, a UK-based travel & style magazine in circulation since 2012, offers a handful of city guides featuring a curated edit of favorite places to visit, eat, and sleep, along with interviews with locals, and essays on each destination. While some guides are print-only, selling for £8.00 (which seems a fair price to pay for the ability to thumb through the crisp layout and beautiful photography), others offer localized lists for free directly on the website.
Inspirational print resources like Cityscopes (Reaktion Books) and Cities of the Imagination: Cultural Travel Guides (Signal Books) rely on flowing prose penned by locals, specialists and academics to paint a picture of the city’s cultural heritage and unique contemporary spirit – that je ne sais quoi that every new destination imparts. Those who travel often inadvertently run the risk of reducing a city to a collection of monuments, museums or restaurants without building a holistic view of where they are. How did it come to be this way? Who has contributed to its ethos? What effect has it had on the region or on the world? What is it’s relevance today? Turn to sources like these to learn something, to be inspired and to build a more comprehensive context for the place you’ll be visiting. (Bonus: it’s sure to provide you with some truly eloquent photo captions.) And for those life phases when travel isn’t an option, don’t rule out compelling armchair tourism either!
SOCIAL MEDIA
Hashtags: when put to use for plotting an adventure, they’re finally more fun than tic-tac-toe. For the visually inclined, a straight-forward location search on Pinterest or a strategic hashtag search on Instagram can help you learn more about a destination or venue under consideration for your itinerary. It’s also a great way to visualize what else you could do that you haven’t thought of yet. For example, perhaps a cursory search for #bogotà lands you on a photo of a beautifully painted building exterior, where the caption mentions a free graffiti tour of the city’s oldest neighborhood. Didn’t know this capital was famous for its urban art? You do now! And you might not have found out about the tour through other channels.
If a basic search for a city or region isn’t yielding interesting results, try switching it up with phrases like #weekendinchangmai, #bestoftblisi or #hiddenmelbourne to unearth more insights.
Many of the best travel accounts on Instagram are run by full-time travel bloggers who are more than happy to share their destination-specific insights, itineraries, and even coupon codes for select tours, experiences or travel-related products. There are plenty such blogs and accounts to choose from, but some of our favorites include Do You Travel, Helene in Between, The Travel Hack, My Life is a Travel Movie, and Tour de Lust. Fair warning: you could easily lose yourself down the gloriously photographed rabbit hole that is each of these accounts, but who said that was a bad thing?
CROWD-SOURCING
This one may seem obvious but it’s often overlooked or misused, as not all user-generated content is created equal. To tap into a community you trust, post a status / tweet / ‘gram saying where(ish) you want to go, when(ish) you might be going, and see what pours in. There are likely plenty of people in your network who come from or have traveled to the spot you’ve got your eye on, and no one lets you in on the best venues and activities quite like a local. Letting them know your timetable allows them to provide seasonal tips. It might even mean they can meet up with you for a meal or put you in touch with a friend on the ground.
That rounds out our pick of the best travel resources, from traditional to alternative, print to digital, authoritative to experimental. Cross reference them all or stick to one preferred source; at the end of the day, there’s no wrong way to make travel happen. As a 2010 study found, it’s the anticipation of travel that makes us the happiest. So dive into the planning stages and start looking forward to the good times ahead.
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Cover photo by Sam Beasley on Unsplash
