Why You Should Leave Your Guidebook at Home When You Travel

Ah... the excitement of a new destination... And that means picking out a new guidebook. Then, once you've got it - the fun or the trouble begins. Some people use a travel guidebook as it should be used - as a list of suggestions for things to see and do and stay and eat in a new place. However, some people use it as a master-slave kind of thing: you must see this and you must do that. Many tourists who go just by the book end up frustrated and exhausted.

We know the reasons for taking along a guidebook on a trip. Here are some of the reasons you should consider for not bringing one along:

1. Guidebooks can take up too much time during a trip. While they're very useful for planning before you leave on your vacation, consulting them every moment can use up a lot of time you could be enjoying whatever it is you're seeing. Some guidebooks also take up a lot of space, and they're cumbersome to carry.

2. Guidebooks make you expect that you must see everything. That's because guidebooks list everything there is to do, see and visit in a location. It's better to arrive somewhere knowing you can't and shouldn't see everything. That way, you'll feel satisfied when you see and do a few things a day and come back to your hotel pleasantly tired and stimulated--not drop-dead exhausted.

3. When you carry a guidebook, you look like a tourist which makes you more susceptible to being bombarded with unnecessary offers for tourists and being harassed by people who like to rip off vacationers. In Malta, for example, anyone who looks like a tourist along the waterfront is approached by time-share operators who often won't take no for an answer.

4. Guidebooks can cause you to miss the beauty of scenes because you're reading too much about how beautiful the scene is. You can often lose the spontaneity of a vacation by relying too much on a guidebook.

5. You are more likely to get into fights with your fellow vacationers if you insist on following the guidebook while they want to go explore and just let the day lead them along where it may.

Remember: a guidebook is a resource for your vacation--not the source of your vacation. What you see and do should depend more on what you think you want to see and do and not what some so-called expert tells you in a guidebook. Probably the best guide on your vacation will be your imagination and sense of adventure.

Source:
Article: How to Use a Guidebook without Letting it Ruin Your Trip by Steve Bramucci for the Sunday Malta Times, August 16, 2009

Ilene Springer lives in Malta and is author or An-American-in-Malta.com.