Showing posts with label guidebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guidebooks. Show all posts
Postcard from Mallorca: Reads Hotel
If you've been following me on Twitter you would have read my comments about some of the stunning boutique hotels we've stayed at, including Son Brull, Reads, La Residencia, Esplendido, Portixol and Maricel among others. Generally, we've been very impressed and what has set these Mallorca hotels apart from the rest has been their stylish decor and attention to detail, luxurious amenities (including beautiful toiletries in most), superb restaurants, enormous swimming pools and spas, an array of facilities (Read's for instance has a bike room with over a dozen state-of-the-art bikes, from mountain bikes to road bikes, and all the gear that guests can borrow), hands-on managers, and attentive staff.We still have some time left on Mallorca, and more hotels to test out, so I'll wait until the end of the trip to give you a full rundown of the island's best, with more detailed reviews. In the meantime, here's a pic of our Arabian Nights-inspired suite at Reads, which features Moroccan furnishings and carpets the owners picked up on a trip there. One of the things I loved about Reads was the individually decorated rooms (no two are the same) and the idiosyncratic character of the property - the result of an eclectic decor that has developed over the years as the owners have gathered intriguing objects. While the building is grand, the decor is elegant and occasionally whimsical, and wandering about the rooms is as much fun as exploring a fascinating museum. More on Reads and Mallorca's other wonderful properties soon.
Postcard from Mallorca: Portocristo
As we've been on the road in Mallorca working - Terry has had a massive photo shoot and I've been updating a book - with long, busy days and no time for anything else but work, I haven't had time to blog. However, a reader has asked that I post some photos instead. So here goes, a series of pretty pictures from Mallorca (mine of course, not Terry's), that I'll call 'postcards' accompanied by shorter posts than I usually write...There's no denying that PORTOCRISTO on the east coast of Mallorca is incredibly touristy, however, I couldn't resist including a pic of the place because the bay is so beautiful, surrounded by low cliffs, with floating pontoons you can drive from, and the sandy beach looked striking with the umbrellas lined up in rows. It was a scorching hot day as you can detect from the shadows on the sand. Unfortunately, due to Terry's tight shooting schedule and the fact I didn't have any sights, hotels or restaurants to check for my book, we spent a whole half an hour here...
Our Italy books hit the shelves!
I almost forgot to tell you... as my regular Cool Travel Guide readers know, we spent a lot of time in Italy last year researching and photographing first editions of new travel guidebooks, starting with a month in Calabria, then a month in Milan, followed by more than a month in the Italian Lakes region and Northern Italy. Our Calabria book written for the Thomas Cook Travellers series hit the shelves in late April (see this post), and our Northern Italy book for the same series will be released in a couple of weeks (you can buy it here). While we're proud of all of our Italian books - Terry shot beautiful photos for them and we put a lot of work into researching and writing them, a book that we're especially proud of (it took even more blood, sweat and tears during particularly challenging circumstances), is our book released last month on the Italian Lakes, including Milan and Po Valley Towns, which we wrote for Footprint's new Italia series. Do have a flick through them when you're next in a bookshop. And don't hesitate to let me know if you ever need tips on travel in Italy.
There's more to beaches and malls in Dubai: the case for using a guidebook
Don’t you think there are some destinations where a guidebook is invaluable? There’s been a backlash against guidebooks in recent years, since the rise of freely available online travel content. And while there are certainly cities I’ll go without a guidebook, cities where you can stroll around and stumble across places of interest pretty easily, there are some destinations where you really need to know where to go to have a good time – whether those tips are coming from trusted locals, or if you don’t know anyone, a trusted guidebook or trusted online source, (note my use of ‘trusted’) is up to you. But Dubai so it seems is definitely one of those destinations where you're going to have a far better time with a guidebook.How to experience Dubai on a budget and dispelling myths about Dubai are topics I find myself increasingly writing about, both for paid assignments and on this blog (see Dispelling the biggest myth about Dubai and Dubai on a budget: the best things in life are free). Yet, I still feel like I have a lot more work ahead of me when I receive comments like those from Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere to yesterday's post. I wish I could turn back the clock for poor Gary to his arrival at the airport and hand him one of our guidesbooks, because Gary came away thinking: “Dubai is expensive and there isn't much to do other than shop. If you want to sit on a beach, I can think of dozens of other places in Europe or in the Indian Ocean which would be more attractive as a destination. The malls seem very orientated to luxury brands. Every month there is some sort of news story which comes out of Dubai about someone getting arrested over something trivial.” If ever there was an argument for using a guidebook, there it is. Guidebooks may quickly become out of date, but in Gary’s case, our 4-year old Lonely Planet Dubai city guide would have shown him a much better time than he seemed to have. And while some people don’t like shelling out money for a guidebook, there is a lot of stuff freely available on the web, including many of the articles we’re written on Dubai for magazines and newspapers. I’ll pop up another post with links to our Dubai content that's freely available online, and I’ll also write another Dubai myth-busting post. Because seriously, there are few cities in the world where it's easier to have a good time - without lying on a beach or stepping into a shopping mall.
How travel writers 'discover' hotels
Hotel gurus Mr and Mrs Smith recently shared their secrets as to How Smith finds hotels on their engaging blog. Mrs Smith is a Cool Travel Guide reader and after she recently commented on my post Don't judge a guidebook by its cover: judge it by its author, I asked her how she selects hotels. Mr and Mrs Smith use a combination of sources: their staff, members, hoteliers, press releases, the media, Smith spies, and hotel books. Travel writers draw on a similar set of resources, dividing We our hotel research into pre-trip and on-the-road research: * PRE-TRIP RESEARCH
1) Travel guidebooks & websites - if we're updating a guidebook, we'll start by looking at the hotels in the book, to see what's in there and what's missing. Then we skim through other guides on the destination. Because publishers like Lonely Planet, DK, Fodors and Frommers have put so much content online, we don't even need to visit a bookshop. What are we looking for? Overlap first of all. If a hotel appears in every guidebook then it had better be special or it had better be the only one in town. If it doesn't appear anywhere else, then we need to find out why. We make notes on these things which we'll investigate later in person.
2) The Internet - we'll look at the websites of hotels on our list and make notes as to which look suitable, suspect, or so fabulous we have to investigate further. We'll check hotel booking sites like Design Hotels, i-escape, Tablet, Hip Hotels, Holiday Pad , Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Leading Hotels of the World, and of course, Mr and Mrs Smith, to see if there are any new hotels that could be worth considering. We'll also do some random Googling. Occasionally we'll check Trip Advisor; there, we're not looking for new properties (as we're more interested in reviews by professional travel critics, people who spend more nights in hotels than they do at home) but rather to confirm any suspicions we might have about a place.
3) Hotel GMs & PRs - because we've stayed at, inspected, reviewed, and photographed tens of thousands of hotels around the globe, we have a lot of friends who manage and work at hotels, so we hear about new hotel openings over conversation, whether it's by email or at dinner, drinks or parties.
4) PRs & press releases - ditto; we have contacts who work on staff at hotels as Public Relations, Media Relations or MarkComm managers, or for PR agencies representing hotels, so we're on a lot of mailing lists and feeds. Dozens of emails arrive in our In Box every day about hotel openings (including invitations to launches!) See Terry's photos of the behind-the-scenes preparations and glam opening of the InterContinental Dubai Festival City earlier this year here.)
5) Travel media - we read every travel magazine and newspaper travel section there is, as many in-flight and hotel mags we can get our hands on, and frequently scour their websites. We subscribe to all the industry and trade feeds and online newsletters. I don't tend to look at travel websites or blogs like Hotel Chatter for new hotels, because generally they've received the same press releases I have, and I'd rather read the information straight from the source than someone else's interpretation. While I occasionally rip items out of travel magazines, due to their long lead times we tend to know about the hotel, and have probably already stayed there, by the time the issue hits the newsstands but their still handy for some we may have missed.
* ON-THE-ROAD RESEARCH
6) Hotel experiences - once we're on the road in a destination, we'll be testing out hotels by staying, eating and drinking at them (both undercover and through arrangement), and by doing hotel inspections. We'll also hear about new hotels this way. While the hotel PR is showing us a suite, she'll probably say "Oh, have you seen the suites at the new xxx hotel? I hear they're lovely but not as spacious as ours."
7) Leg-work - once we arrive at a destination, we'll have a lot of places to check out and try, restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, shops, museums, galleries, and other attractions, and during encounters with people at these places, we'll inevitably hear about hotel openings.
8) Accidental discoveries - as we pound the pavements of a city all day every day, there'll always be one or two hotels we stumble upon that we haven't read heard about and nobody has mentioned. They may have just opened or may still be under construction, or maybe it's a hidden gem that's been continually over-looked or recently renovated. Either way, we'll be in there checking it out.
So, how do you hear about hotels? And have you ever discovered secret gems that weren't in any guidebooks or websites that nobody seemed to know about? Pictured: our studio apartment at the sublime Aleenta Phuket, which we experienced last October while we were in Thailand for DK.
Top 5 destination essentials
So, you're going away and you're going it alone? I've convinced you to forget about the guide. You're definitely not doing a tour, because they're no good for you either. Okay, well, highly specialized tours are excepted. So let me dream for a moment: a musical journey through South America with David Byrne, a Middle East trip with Robert Fisk, a round-the-world-in-80-meals tour* with Anthony Bourdain, a global surfing safari with Kelly Slater (that last one is Terry's choice). Dream on.** So, how do you cope once you get to the destination? How do you find your way around, order meals, quickly get acquainted with a place? What are the destination essentials you need to take to guide you when you're there? And note that you should buy them before you leave home because they won't always be available when you arrive. Let's go for a top 5:1) a phrase book - never, and I mean NEVER, go anywhere where English isn't the official language without a phrase book. Even if your guidebook tells you everyone speaks English. Think about it: how would you feel if someone came up to you in your hometown and started speaking another language? My guess is you probably wouldn't like it. If they at least began with a mis-pronounced and stilted "hello - how- are - you? - do - you - speak - Swahili? - No? - Ok.." you'd be more patient when they started miming. There's no excuse for not learning the ten travel language basics*** on the plane. And if you're travelling with a loved-one, the drinks are free and it's a long flight, it's even fun.
2) a dictionary - a phrase book is never enough. They're generally not very well thought-out and never, and I do mean NEVER, include the right phrases for the right moments, especially in emergencies. Like when you need to say to the Turkish-speaking vet: "The stray cat we've adopted has worms" and "Will the four kittens she has had on our terrace also get worms?"*
3) a good map - don't expect that the airport/hotel/tourist office/book stores at the destination you're visiting will have good maps. They almost always don't. Try to get a map that's as detailed as possible (compare it with maps available online) and one that has place names in English and in the language of the country you're heading to. If you're planning on hiring a car and driving at all, you'll need it.
4) a guidebook - even if you've booked all your accommodation online and organized transport, a guidebook still comes in handy. Don't treat it like your bible though; it's a guide, that's all it is. Leave it in the hotel room sometimes. But guidebooks make a great starting point. (More on choosing guidebooks and what to look for in a future post.)
5) a spare mobile phone - make sure it allows you to pop a local SIM card in and make that one of the first things you buy when you arrive. Load it up with lots of credit. So, who are you going to call? For starters, instead of heading to the first touristy restaurant you see on the square, you're going to do what the locals do and call a good restaurant ahead of time to make a booking... but let's save that - doing what the locals do - for another post.
* Only to casual beach-side places where you can eat with sand between your toes of course.
** More on our dream trips in another post.
*** Let's save these for another post too.
**** I'll save that post for another time also. Or maybe you don't need to know that story.
Death of the guidebook?
That's the headline of a story in The Age yesterday written by former Lonely Planet writer Chris Taylor who recounts his discovery that the author who'd updated the China guide before him hadn't visited places himself, but had sub-contracted a cafe owner (who subsequently recruited his cousin!) to do the research instead. Taylor argues that due to increasing competition, guidebooks can't generate the sales revenues to justify the high fees required to ensure the kind of legwork and first-hand research that results in personal recommendations. That Lonely Planet's fees aren't high enough is true, but good writers will still do the legwork. So, is the guidebook dead? Kind of. But this isn't the first time it's been suggested: see The Death of the Guidebook? (The Observer/The Guardian, 2006) and Guidebooks: RIP (The Times, 2007). And I certainly don't believe the Internet killed the guidebook. There are travellers who still prefer discerning critical information written by experts who travel for a living over 'reviews' by people who take holidays once or twice a year. And there are still travellers who prefer carrying a guidebook to printing reams of paper off a website. I don't think all guidebooks will die, just the Lonely Planet style, and by that I mean the mainstream, one-size-fits-all continent and country guides, although I think LP is on the right track with the Encounter guides, as they were with their 'Best Ofs'. As anyone with any kind of marketing sense knows, rarely does one book (or film or CD for that matter) appeal to everyone, and the ones that do, like blockbuster movies or airport novels, tend to be bland, flawed and lack complexity and style. One guidebook can't be all things to all types of travellers, whether it's budget, mid-range or top-end, old or young, singles or couples. When they try to please everyone, they don't do very well at pleasing anyone. However, guidebooks have been taking a different direction for a while now. Consider the success of niche series Wallpaper, for travellers into architecture, art and design, and Luxe, focused at a style-conscious set. Aimed at a narrow target audience, they contain travel content created with their readership firmly in mind. The phenomenal success of Cool Camping, one of the UK's top-selling guidebooks last year, and the outpouring of emotion toward the enchanting hand-crafted Love travel guides are further evidence that travellers want more from their guidebooks. They want guidebooks produced for them. Well, don't we all? What do you think?Whenever I travel around the Middle East, I always find it interesting that tourists from the region don't use guidebooks. Admittedly, they're often pilgrims visiting sites of religious significance, such as these Iranian women in Damascus. But they still visit museums, go shopping, and eat out. They don't speak Arabic but somehow they manage, they find their way around, and they still seem to have a good time.
The Thomas Kohnstamm Affair continues
The Lonely Planet author fraud scandal has taken more turns than we did on the switchback riddled roads of Crete on our most recent research trip there. Now referred to as the Thomas Kohnstamm Affair by the Guardian, Gadling and others, the controversy hasn't yet begun to die the death some might have predicted. Google the topic and you'll get some 255+ articles and climbing, including blog posts. And the stories are still coming. While the mainstream media initially resorted to sensationalist headlines and regurgitating content off feeds, with little in the way of analysis, recent coverage is more considered, reflective and opinionated, and often coming from first-hand experience. Others are still resorting to attention-grabbing headlines to pull in readers and in those cases the discussion that follows in the comments is tending to be more insightful (especially from travellers) and the revelations more compelling (from guidebook writers). Those worth a look include Travel publishers slam Lonely Planet (The Bookseller); Which guidebooks can you trust (Times Online); Postcards from the edge of travel writing (The Independent); Why guidebooks have to lie (Sydney Morning Herald blog); The truth about writing Lonely Planet guidebooks (The Guardian); Writer's story rattles Lonely Planet contributors; and Guidebooks: don't believe everything you read (Times Online); and Derelict vs. Duty (The Perrin Post, Concierge). Readers have been asking me to write more about the travel writing process here and although that wasn't my intention in starting this blog, that doesn't seems like such a bad idea now, if just to show that we're not all like Thomas Kohnstamm.
Media reels: Lonely Planet author fraud
Am I outraged? Am I reeling? Am I surprised? No, no and no. But as a travel writer, and a former Lonely Planet guidebook author, it’s impossible for me to keep blogging away about luxury travel on a budget (my next post) and ignore the dozens of headlines in the global media over the last days following pre-publicity for Thomas Kohnstamm's book 'Do Travel Writer's Go To Hell? (Random House, due for release 22/4/08)'. Have you seen these? Confessions of a Travel Writer Rattle Execs at Lonely Planet (The New York Observer, 9/4/08); Journalism on a Shoestring (Outside magazine, April 08); Shocker: Lonely Planet Writers Accept Schwag (Guest of a Guest blog, 10/4/08); and this weekend: Lonely Planet writer says he made up part of books (Reuters); Lonely Planet reeling after author's fraud (www.news.com.au); Travel writer tells newspaper he plagiarized, dealt drugs (on CNN.com); Lonely Planet rocked by claims of free trips, plagiarism (Courier Mail, Australia); Lonely Planet rocked by author fraud (National Nine News/NineMSN); Lonely Planet's Bad Trip (The Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph, Australia); Lonely Planet Rocked By Fraud Scandal (Sydney Morning Herald/The Age); A travel writer on a not so lonely planet (Telegraph, UK); and 5 Reasons to be outraged by the Lonely Planet fraud (Gadling travel blog). There was also a fascinating (for different reasons) discussion on Lonely Planet's online travel community forum Thorn Tree: Lonely Planet Author's Fraud and comments on the Colombia guide. As I haven't read the much-discussed book yet, I can't comment on the content. But like many writers I was initially thrilled to see a fellow author publish what some would consider to be a real book. After all, every travel writer dreams of writing travel lit. (Terry and I are also writing a book about our two years of continuous travel on commissions). But then there was the barrage of headlines and simplistic opinions. Such as the suggestion that one writer's wild behavior and "questionable ethics" imply all travel writers 'research' books this way. And the even more ludicrous claim that this will impact the credibility of travel writing and the integrity of travel writers. Let's face it: every industry has its equivalent of the gonzo journalist. And every industry has its workers who occasionally behave unethically on the job, just as there are organizations that make it easy for workers to abuse the 'system' and managers and staff who prefer to look the other way. Plagiarism? Accepting freebies? None of this is new. While Lonely Planet's policy doesn't allow authors to accept comps or discounts in exchange for positive coverage when on assignment for LP, travel writers from some of the world's most reputable newspapers and magazines frequently travel courtesy of airlines and hotels, and get food, drinks, tours, spas and other activities for free. It doesn't appear to compromise their work. (Or does it? There's a topic for another post.) Some writers are also lazy, writing about places they've never been, and cutting and pasting freely from other stories without acknowledgment; see my previous posts. But the actions of a small percentage shouldn't impact the whole travel writing profession, not publisher nor travel writer.Okay, I admit it, there was one thing that was surprising - apart from the fact that Lonely Planet didn't find any errors in the Colombia guide (or any of Thomas K's other books), so we better make that two - why on earth would Thomas have accepted the Colombia contract and not gone there? The main reason we all work these long hours (12 hour days, 7 days a week, 362 days a year - and I'm not kidding!), for very little pay (that part is true too), is for the love of travel. To get an opportunity to travel and not do so is even more ludicrous than some of claims being made. If you didn't see this article A Job With Travel But No Vacation in 2006, take a read now; note that the story opens with a tale from Thomas' travels.
The image? Note-taking over a lunch break while researching in Ithaki, Greece, two summers ago. Terry is off taking photos of fishermen mending their nets. Now do you see why we do what we do?
Notes on Observations and Conversations Overheard at Ancient Knossos: part 2
Knossos – well-restored rooms. Spacious. Light-filled. Vast storage jars called: pithoi. Tick. Three 20-something backpackers read sign outside rooms. Sign says: MAGAZIN. Girl says: “I didn’t know they had magazines in those days.” One guys says: “I think it refers to the magazine of a gun…” Other guy silent. Looks confused. First two dawdle to next set of rooms. Other guy stays. Looks at sign. Looks at room. Looks baffled. (I want to write that he scratched his head but that would be a lie. But I do imagine him scratching his head.) magasin = shop/store in French? Pithoi in rooms – a store room? French archaeologists? Is ‘magazin’ warehouse in Greek? Look this up. Guards start blowing whistles continuously! They shout loudly and rudely at us!! “Ruins are closing. Leave immediately!” Like being in concentration camp/prison! I look at watch – 15 minutes to go!!! They obviously have somewhere to go. Things to do: write letter of complaint to Ministry for Tourism. English backpacking couple look incredulously at guidebook. Poor things just arrived! Guy approaches guard. “Guidebook is wrong!” shouts guard, “They are always wrong!” (Well, mine is right.) “Come back tomorrow,” she barks. “But tomorrow we’ll be at Gortys” (Another ruin on other side of island. Dates to Minoan times. Guards nice there, although still looked like they’d prefer to be at home) “Does Gortys close at the same time?” “Of course!” growls guard, “These are the winter hours!” She whistles in his face. (This is true.) Couple look disappointed in guidebook. Ticket guy must have been asleep when they came through – forgot to tell them they had no time to see anything. Couple run around and take photos. Guard keeps whistling. Terry still taking photos for book. Sees me. Looks at watch. Looks at guard. Shakes head. (Still 10 minutes before official closing time. Takes 1 minute to walk to exit.) Guard looks at us “The ruins are closing!” she barks for hundredth time. Terry says to me: “Don’t worry, I haven’t sworn at her yet.” Guard understands. Looks Terry up and down. Says something in Greek to other guard. Clearly not commenting on his clothes. We admire cherry blossoms on way out. Bookshop. Tick. Souvenir shop. Tick. Café. Tick. Ancient Knossos. Tick.
Notes on Observations and Conversations Overheard at Ancient Knossos: part 1
Visit to Knossos, most popular archaeological site in Crete: ancient Minoan palace (AKA Minos) settlement built around 2000BC. Neolithic remains suggest area settled as far back as 6000BC! Accommodated 100,000 people at height of Minoan civilization!! After paying for tickets, ticket guy tells me ruins close in 1 hour. Closing time. Tick. “Be quick,” he says, closes eyes, returns to sleep. “I’m a writer, updating a guidebook,” I tell him. “I need to check the phone number and summer opening hours.” (It’s winter. I already know price.) Ticket guy looks bored. Disinterested. Woman hovering behind me, shoves me aside aggressively, sticking her head near window. She must know closing time, I think. Eager to see ruins. Still, she’s rude.“Do you mind?” I ask her, irritated. “I’m helping you with translation,” she says. The ticket seller speaks English. “Do you need a guide?” she asks. “No, we’ve been here before,” I lie. (It’s easier this way.) She goes away. (If I simply said 'no' she would keep following us, firing trivial titbits and random dates at us. That’s what they do, hoping we’ll say: “Oh, come on then, we’ve changed our minds, you’ve impressed us so much with your incredible knowledge of useless facts and dull trivia, we'd love you to chatter away at us endlessly for hours, spoiling our pleasure of the ruins!”) Knossos – controversial - in 1900 English archaeologist Arthur Evans hastily reconstructed much of palace – Evans said original wooden pillars and beams would have collapsed otherwise. Result splendid – vividly painted walls, red pillars, vibrant mosaics and frescoes. Flamboyant. Did it really look like this?? Two Japanese travellers race around – one eye on guidebooks, other on sights. (Is that possible?) They look at watches more than ruins. Two female Greek guards check out Japanese girls. Look them up and down. Speak to each other in Greek. Commenting on clothes? Greek guards could take inspiration from murals – Minoans really knew how to dress! Elderly French couple spend inordinate amount of time admiring enormous pottery urns. Surely they know they only have an hour?! It’s a massive site! (Okay, this happened at Phaistos, but it seems appropriate to place it here.) Phaistos Palace dates to 1900 BC. Beautifully sprawled down a hillside overlooking a fertile valley. I spend more time watching old French couple than I do enjoying ruins. What if couple wander to far end of site, guard (eager to get home) doesn’t see them and locks them in?! Staff start to leave 15 minutes before closing time – they appear irritated that we take our time. Don’t they know how far we have all come to see these ruins?!
Romantic representations in guidebook writing: case study #2
The Cypriot village of Lefkara, pictured here and in the previous two posts, is an old village of stone buildings that have been beautifully restored. Known for its lace, its tiny hilly streets are lined with shops selling the exquisite handmade embroidery (along with imported, manufactured reproductions.) The road leading to town is lined with enormous tacky signs saying telling you to “Park here!” and Come inside and watch old women make lace!” If you ignore the signs and drive on, you’ll most likely be confronted by touts furiously waving to get your attention only to tell you it’s impossible to drive your little car through the extremely narrow streets of the village and that you’re better off parking here – conveniently, outside the entrance to his restaurant. Ignoring him, you’ll push on, finding out that the lanes are no narrower than those of any other Cypriot village, but discovering that the old ladies are just as aggressive at encouraging you into their stores as the touts are, making shopping for lace suddenly unappealing. On your way out of town you’ll look back with disappointment, until you notice the picturesque village vista and won’t be able to resist parking to take a photo. Once out of the car, however, you won’t help but notice the abandoned junk scattered about the place (rusty fridges are common) and the trash sprawling down the hill, as if dumped there daily by the local garbage truck. This is a typical sight outside villages in Cyprus that you definitely don’t read about in guidebooks. The first time you see it you’ll be disappointed and you’ll probably find yourself getting angrier each time you see it after that. But what do you prefer to read? The romantic version or the reality?
Romantic representations in guidebook writing: case study #1
Romance or reality: what do travellers really want to read in guidebooks? Cyprus is dotted with delightful villages of winding lanes and atmospheric stone houses sprawling down hillsides in woody valleys. Sturdy old ladies can be seen carting bundles of wood down the street on their backs and old men ride donkeys through town, the guidebooks tell us. And it’s true. But unfortunately many of the villages are now ghost towns, their ramshackle old stone houses boarded up, their gardens unkempt, junk crowding their yards, and trash dumped down hillsides on the outskirts of town. The young people have moved to the cities or overseas to work and the few residents that are left are over 60, enjoying their last years in the village they have loved and known all their lives, and struggling alone to maintain their traditional way of life. Well, they’re not so alone. It’s not uncommon to see a wrinkled old lady in headscarf and apron sitting in her doorway, taking in some sun and watching the passing traffic – and next to her see a bored young Filipina or Indian woman, perhaps employed by the guilty son or daughter as a companion-cum-maid to watch over their abandoned parent. You don’t read any of this in the guidebooks.
Romanticism versus reality: what do travellers really want?
So why is it that guidebooks romanticize destinations and that we’re much more likely to read the unpleasant truths about a place in poetry than we are in a travel guide? A travel editor’s argument might go, do readers really want to read about ugly places and the social problems of a destination they are dreaming about visiting? Who wants to destroy their dreams? (Because to destroy dreams is to destroy book sales.) But, the author might argue, how many travellers wants to arrive at a place only to be disappointed because it’s not as pretty as it appears in the portrait that the book has been painted? How many travellers want to get robbed because they’re ill-prepared and have let down their guard? Take Buenos Aires, a city that’s been flavour-of-the-month for a few years now, a city that the travel press frequently runs features on. Rarely is Buenos Aires’ high incidence of gun crime mentioned, nor the fact that not everyone has recovered from the 2001 economic crisis, nor that parts of the city are crawling with pickpockets preying on tourists, nor that travellers will see the cartoneros criss-crossing the city, trawling through people’s trash to collect cardboard to sell for recycling. Don't get me wrong, I love the city and I've written about it a lot. But do travellers really only want to read about tango and red wine? As travellers, do we not prefer to know the truth, to get a balanced perspective, and to be prepared? And then be pleasantly surprised?
The romance of poetry – and guidebooks
The Romantic English poet William Wordsworth was carrying a copy of a travel guide as he did a walking tour of the Wye valley in 1798 when he composed the lyrical poem Tintern Abbey. The guidebook was William Gilpin's ‘Observations on the River Wye’. In his poem, Wordsworth paints a portrait of the abbey ruins and the surrounding valley that is far more romanticized than that depicted in Gilpin’s book. Wordsworth writes of steep and lofty cliffs, the wild green landscape, and the fair river. In reality, the ruined abbey served as a home to the poverty-stricken, the destitute, beggars, and vagrants, and not far away noisy iron-smelting furnaces puffed out putrid-smelling smoke from the factory’s location on the riverbank, while the river’s water itself was polluted. A romantic, Wordsworth didn’t want to acknowledge the social realities of the time, the damage to the environment by new industries, unemployment, and homelessness. Gilpin’s guide is a rarity, even now. These days the situation is reversed – we’re more likely to read truths in a poem than in a guidebook.
Guidebooks to ‘the picturesque’: creating a new generation of traveller
Travel writer, artist, teacher, and reverend, William Gilpin obsessively collected drawings and sketched, and, as a student at Oxford in 1748, self-published ‘A Dialogue upon the Gardens at Stow in Buckinghamshire’. With practical tips for travellers on how they could get the most out of their visits to the country and best enjoy the scenery, the book was probably the world’s first travel guide. A unique combination of guidebook and reflective essay on aesthetics, it explored Gilpin’s ideas to do with ‘the picturesque’. A mad fan of landscapes – the craggier, more rugged and wilder, the better – Gilpin ruminated on the beauty of nature and perception in a way that hadn’t been done before. In his ‘Essay on Prints’ on landscape painting, published 20 years later, Gilpin defined ‘the picturesque’ as the kind of beauty that pleases us when we look at a painting, and formulated (often amusing) full-blown theories on picturesque beauty. Gilpin travelled widely during the 1760s and 1770s and on his trips began to apply his theories to what he was seeing, filling journals with sketches and thoughts, which he then circulated among friends. A decade later in 1782 Gilpin published ‘Observations on the River Wye’, based on a summer there, followed by ‘Observations on the Lake District and the West of England’, a guidebook series in the making… Both books were incredibly popular, inspiring people to travel to the English countryside simply for a spot of ‘scenic touring’, and to enjoy the landscapes in the ways Gilpin suggested – in much the way contemporary guidebooks direct us to today. When Gilpin’s readers travelled they too spent their time sketching and talking about their experiences in the way they might chat about visiting a gallery and the paintings they’d seen. I like to wonder whether Gilpin was created this new generation of traveller or whether he simply preached to the converted (no pun intended) and wrote for a readership of travellers like himself.
Travel writing and the pace of research
This month-long research trip in Thailand for the new DK guidebook has been one of the busiest commissions we've ever undertaken. It's also been one of the most sublime. We've flown, driven, ferried, and trekked thousands of kilometers in southern and northern Thailand, in our quest to review some 280 hotels and restaurants. So please forgive the silence. There's been little time for blogging in between hotel inspections, spa treatments, breakfast, lunches and dinners, and activities that have ranged from cooking classes and elephant mahout training to ox cart rides and jungle treks. Then there are all the tedious things in between - checking in and out of hotels every day or two, picking up and dropping off hire cars, checking in at airports, hanging out in lounges and waiting at baggage carousels, and sitting in our car as we wait in line for the inevitably late car ferry - all of which consume an interminable amount of our precious time. The continual travel and constant activity has meant little time for relaxation. As I'm writing a new spa spread for the next edition of the guide, and both my partner Terry and I are working on spa-focused stories for travel magazines, our spa 'research' has comprised our only down time. Along with an hour here and there to test out our private infinity pools (such as this one at the Four Seasons Koh Samui). It's these moments of pampering in tranquil treatment rooms and gazing out across the tops of palm trees to serene sea vistas that have kept us sane. Naturally, we don't expect any sympathy.