I always take a guidebook. I promise myself
to do serious homework in advance, so I can spend my travel time looking at
things of interest, and not the guidebook. When it comes to it, I fail to do
the preparation – and even on the trip itself, give only cursory attention to
the guidebook. From that, I conclude that my interest in the minutiae of art
history etc. etc. is superficial. The
key things in guidebooks are good maps (essential), checklists of key sights,
and opening times. For deeper stuff, a
slow assimilation of information works for me, best after the event. Guidebooks
make most sense after the return home, when I can visualize what they are
talking about.
The danger of this approach, of course, that you miss things. On this trip to Florence and Rome, I took a heavy-ish guidebook that I already had, and bought two more
small ones. They weighed down my suitcase and I hardly used them.
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| Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Rome. |
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