29 Sep 2008 The trips starts while you’re planning it

While planning trips, I always spend a lot of time and search of references of the places I’m going to on the internet, in travel guides, books, movies, magazine and alike. I am a personal fan of Rough Guides, while Giorgio is a Lonely Planet user: whichever is your flavor, a travel guide still is a good place to start. They’re probably still the best way to get the general gist of your future destination, and in the same time they contain anything from practical information to great references to other resources like books and movies to read. The internet has opened a whole new world for location geeks: you can find services like the Brooklyn-based Outside.in, that lets you dive into the neighboroods of all the major cities in the US through blogs and conversations that happend in a geolocalized fashion; or you can find little gems like Metropolitan Diary, a weekly column of the New York Times, where letters of newyorkers are selected and published, with the accomplished aim of giving a terrific portrait of the city. Then of course you have the locals, but it’s not easy to find people that share the same passion for their city as you: I happened to find myself in the Shakespeare & Co. on Lexington Avenue, between 68th and 69th Street asking for a book about New York, not a guide, a live experience from someone who lived or lives there; the guys at the counter sat on it for a second, disappeared for a couple of minutes and came up with this book called Gone to New York: Adventures in the City, by this guy Ian Frazier who honestly I never heard before, and it was exactly what I was looking for. My roomies, Bill and Anna, are also very passionate about New York, and allowed me to discover things guides wouldn’t say, or experience parts of the city life tourist hardly ever get to taste, spicing up my trip in ways no other source could have done.

So to sum up, here are my favorite sources for travel planning: travel guides, in my case Rough Guides for the general outlook and practical information (what currency will I find? do I need insurance?), and a headstart on restaurants and party venues (Rough Guides do a particularly good job in this part I think); whenever I get to the place, if there is a local edition of TimeOut, I always grab one to know what’s hot and what’s not. Blogs and conversations tracked on the internet, either through services like Outside.in, or in their absence, using search engines. Books, movies, photos and a number of other great resources about the place I’m going to: a novel or a movie can do much more than any travel guide in helping you find the right mood for your trip. Not any place in the world has the same appeal on people as New York, but if you’re lucky enough, you can find your local version of Metropolitan Diary, often hidden in local magazines and newspaper- always check the free press for that. Locals and other travelers are a great source of insights, do’s and dont’s, and curiosities you wouldn’t otherwise be able to grasp. Travelers and especially expats in particular share with you the experience of exploring a new territory, and have the same sensitivity as you do: they can be a very precious source of advice. Websites like CouchSurfing or HospitalityClub are also a great way to get to meet people- locals, travelers or expats wherever you are going.