Better Living's Favorite
Travel Guidebooks

There are dozens of terrific guidebooks available in the large chain bookstores, and even more choices in travel bookstores. It's tempting to fritter away a good portion of your travel budget collecting more of these enticing books than you need. Here are the ones I found most useful:

Eyewitness (now called DK) Travel Books
The most beautiful of the guidebooks: gorgeous photos, and a feature I especially appreciate-traditional foods of the region with pictures of each dish. Great for dreaming about all the possibilities and developing your overall travel plan. These books are so visually compelling, you'll keep them on the coffee table long after the trip is over.

Karen Brown's Inns and Itineraries
Unusual, quaint places to stay, and well researched itineraries including appropriate estimates of time needed for each sight. Excellent for daily planning, oriented toward beautiful country sites and drives.

Rough Guides
If I were limited to taking only one guidebook, this would be it! Loads of history, art history and
geological information about each region, town or village. Includes restaurants and hotel information, addresses, and closing dates of each location described. Quirky and opinionated, these guides steer you to off-beat little places and away from sterile tourist traps. Another unique feature of Rough Guides: listings at the back of movie and book recommendations for your own research.

Access Guides
This is the guide to take if you are focusing on one large city, especially if you are on foot. Detailed maps target specific areas of each city. Access describes interesting destinations, street by street, including restaurants and hotels. Since all site are numbered, and each category has a distinct color, it is impossible to get lost or miss anything using this guide. Warning: if you only have a day or so in a city, you can get bogged down with all the details Access offers.

Others: Michelin, Fodors, Frommers, Berlitz, Cadogan, Rick Steves

Note: The Michelin Guide, formerly my favorite, seems out of date nowadays. Locations are listed in alphabetical order, making it cumbersome to use if you travel from one small village to another. Guides which lead you sequentially from region to region, and town to town within each region, make more sense to me both for planning and to use for information as you travel.