How hotel guides scam package tourists. It also happens: the attraction is closed to the public, period

When you are really looking forward to something good, your body produces the happiness hormone - dopamine. Take advantage of this. Start planning your trip yourself to get more pleasure from your trip, and at the same time save money and nerves.

Plan ahead

Start preparing six months before your trip. Immediately after choosing a country, buy round-trip tickets - this will indicate the boundaries within which you will plan your trip, and will also save money, because buying tickets in advance is always cheaper.

After that, find out the country of departure. If necessary, apply for it on the embassy website. Come to the embassy on time or Visa Center with all the documents listed on the site. Usually a visa takes from two weeks to a month. When you finish all the boring bureaucratic procedures, the most interesting part of the preparation begins.

Explore the country through social networks

Start preparing by searching for images in a search engine or on Pinterest. Enter the name of the country where you plan to travel in the search bar of the social network. She will give you photos of the most scenic spots, taken by other travelers. This way you can immediately understand what you want to see with your own eyes, and what you can do without, determine which attractions are especially popular, and find unusual places, which not every guide will tell you about.

For example, this is how I found Adam’s Peak mountain in Sri Lanka, which is located at an altitude of 2,234 meters above sea level. Buddhists believe that Buddha left his mark there, and monks climb there every year. Guides do not offer excursions to this mountain, so you can only get to it on your own. And it's worth it!

Watch videos on YouTube. When we were in Peru and came down from the mountains after a four-day hike to Machu Picchu, my husband and I really wanted to drink delicious and inexpensive coffee. For everyone, this path ends the same way - in the village of Aguas Calientes. It's crazy out there high prices in a cafe for travelers. After an hour of searching, I remembered a video from one traveler: she said that on the second floor of one of the buildings there is an inconspicuous market with low prices. There we drank excellent coffee and bought water and cookies for the road to Cusco.

Read what they write about the places you like

In the photos you may like the beautiful lake with pink water or in the form of a tree house. Read how to get there and what reviews other travelers have left about the place. Routes can be found on the Vinsky forum, reviews on TripAdvisor. It may turn out that you will have to walk half a day through wild tropical forests to get to the hotel, and the lake may turn out to be someone’s invention. Calculate your strength and check the facts.

Find friends in the country you plan to travel to

You can use Instagram or Facebook. Or see who is looking for a place to stay in your city on CouchSurfing. This is a service for travelers around the world, allowing them to find free accommodation and meet locals.

Before our trip to Peru, the Peruvian Anna stayed with us. Thanks to Anna, we learned that the safest areas in Lima are Miraflores and Barranco. At the same time, the coolest parties are held in dangerous areas and you can get to them with locals, who are easy to find on the same CouchSurfing.

Plan your route

Redraw the outline of the country in a notebook and mark your planned places to visit. This will make it clearer how to build a route.

I usually build a route in the form of a closed circle clockwise: from the lowest point on the map I go up and then go down. Many travelers use this method. I don’t know how else to explain that from city to city we always meet acquaintances from the beginning of the journey. By communicating and sharing routes, we always find out that we have the same plans. The main goal of such tricks is to build a route most efficiently, spending less time and money on the road.

Write down the coordinates of the places you want to visit, according to the scheme: name, city, address or location, telephone numbers (if any).

Write in English or in the language of the country where you are traveling, so that you can show passers-by and ask where to go.

Take care of your comfort: food, housing, luggage

Following the route, you will stop all the time at different hotels and cities. Allow two to three days for each city, depending on the attractions you plan to visit.

Since you won't have to stay there for long, you can experiment with housing formats. For example, in one city you can stay in a noisy party town, in another you can book a room in a luxury villa, in a third you can spend the night with one of the locals. Booking, Airbnb and the already familiar CouchSurfing will help you with this.

Think in advance where you will eat. Explore the Entertainment, Lodging, and Restaurants tabs on TripAdvisor. Write down names and addresses in a notepad. Most likely, you won’t need them, but it’s so nice to come across familiar names in a city that is miles away from your home. You feel like a local.

Try not to take a lot of things with you. You will be more mobile if you only have the essentials with you.

Take care of your travel within the country

Study the transport you will use to travel between points on the map. Usually it is enough to type in the search engine the name of the country and your chosen method of transportation: train, bus, plane, rented car and others.

Buy tickets in advance. If you don’t want to buy in advance, find out and write down how and where to do it when you arrive in the country.

Just check until when you can buy a ticket. It was a shame when we didn't buy tickets in advance for the scenic railway from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka, only to find out that they sold out a month in advance. Don't repeat our mistakes.

Make your own guide

Collect all the knowledge about the country and your route in a guidebook. You can color it, paste in colorful illustrations and cutouts, write down all the necessary information and even basic phrases in the local language.

I always do this when preparing for a trip. My guide always contains all the key places to visit, addresses, telephone numbers and important information.

Instead of a conclusion

Once a year, my husband and I travel according to the described scheme. We don’t like to sit in one place, so during a standard two weeks of vacation we have time to visit 4-5 cities and explore all the sights that interest us. This regime requires a high degree of discipline and clear planning, but it gives us freedom, because all these plans are ours and we can change them as we please.

In six months we manage to tune in to the country and come there like family. And in the guidebook I paste all the tickets, receipts and other memorable pieces of paper from the trip. Then I put it on the shelf, and it becomes part of our family history.

There are many very detailed travel guide apps for smartphones and tablets. However, the good old paper guides have also not lost their relevance, since they do not require recharging, do not slow down or freeze. And text written on paper is often perceived better than electronic text. We will not give preference to any one type of guides and will consider the best guides, whether they are in printed or electronic form.

10. Google Trips

Russian language: no.

Cost: free.

Opens the rating of popular guidebooks excellent mobile app for iOS and Android, which contains information about all popular tourist destinations in the world. All available information is sorted into sections: Food, Attractions, Interesting information, and so on. You can read comments from tourists about places where it is better to go, or, on the contrary, it is absolutely not worth visiting. The program is integrated with Google Maps, so that the most detailed maps will be at your service anywhere in the world. The routes proposed by the program can be changed at your discretion: change the number and composition of objects, reduce or increase the duration of the excursion and make notes. And if you have booking notifications from Google in your inbox, Google Trips will show you the flight and departure time.

Minuses: no Russian language.

9. TripAdvisor

Is there Russian language.

Cost: free.

This mobile app offers a variety of hotel and restaurant photos that have been uploaded by travelers, not advertisers. In addition, TripAdvisor has detailed maps 300 cities around the world and can be accessed even offline. Thanks to reviews from real users, it is very easy to find the cheapest flight tickets, hotel rooms and restaurants, and you can book a place, as they say, in one click.

Flaws: There are problems with sorting in the search; the “my trips” option does not work on the tablet.

8. Afisha guides to cities around the world

Is there Russian language.

A series of domestic guides to Russia and the world was written taking into account the interests of Russian tourists. Each Afisha guidebook is compiled by an author who often visits the city in question or permanently lives in it. The books describe in great detail the most popular tourist routes, as well as the main points of city life: shopping establishments, popular restaurants, clubs and theaters. An added bonus: these guides are sold in most bookstores.

Minuses: There are guides only for cities, not countries as a whole.

7. Rough Guides

Is there Russian language.

There is a reason why people fall asleep reading history books, and that reason is boredom. However, reading guides to cities and countries from Rough Guides will not be boring. The descriptions in them are very vivid and objective, there are helpful information not only about the history of a particular city, or its attractions, but also about bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs, indicating price categories. There are many maps in the books.

However, due to their detail, these guides can be intimidating for those who value brevity.

6. Dorling Kindersley Guides

Is there Russian language.

Some of the most the best guides 2017 on our list. They have district maps, beautiful and educational illustrations and photographs, and the presentation style is not mentoring, but very interesting. Eat practical advice for travelers, description of seasonal events in different cities, and, of course, information about hotels, markets, cafes, pubs and other types of leisure. However, in reviews there are complaints about the paper not being of very high quality; pages can easily fall out of the book. The text in the books is small, which is inconvenient for people with poor eyesight. And the price of guidebooks is high - from 750 rubles and above.

5. Guides Polyglot

Is there Russian language.

The first guidebooks in this series were published in black and white, but modern “Polyglots” are full-color books on high-quality paper. There are guides both for Russian cities and most popular destinations Asia, Europe, Africa, America and Oceania. The books have a mini-phrase book, and they are written briefly and to the point. There is information about the main tourist routes, detailed maps, practical tips and photographs of key attractions.

4. Bradt Travel Guides

Is there Russian language.

Small and inexpensive guides for those who are interested in leisurely travel (trips by public transport and on the train hiking). From the Bradt guides you will learn a brief historical information about the city you want to visit, about its most interesting places.

Flaws: There are no color illustrations or city maps; the available maps are very small, so be prepared to look at them with a magnifying glass.

3. Guides Around the World

Is there Russian language.

The top 3 best guides to Russia and the world open with a series of domestic publications. They are very informative and talk about the main attractions “without water” different cities and countries. If you like objective recommendations and a lot of photographs that allow you to understand whether you should go to a given place or not, then the paper guide “Around the World” will be an excellent choice.

Flaws: maps of most cities are tied to the central part.

2. The National Geographic Traveler

Is there Russian language.

From these guides you can get information about national characteristics, cultural traditions and attractions of the place you have chosen to travel. The books are full of informative maps and gorgeous illustrations. There are options walking routes by main cities different countries and travel to certain areas.

Flaws: Not all attractions are given detailed and interesting descriptions.

1. Series of guides from Lonely planet

Is there Russian language.

In the first place in the selection of the best guides for tourists are very detailed, thorough paper guides, which contain all the intricacies of staying in a particular country. The reader is provided with information about the history of the country or city being visited, all the more or less interesting sights are described and the best time to visit them is indicated, as well as approximate cost visits. The guide also gives advice on what kind of transport is best to move around this area and what kind of transport transport cards It’s better to use it to save money on your trip.

These guides have two disadvantages: the weight of the book (about 2 kg) and the price is about 1000 rubles. There are free electronic versions in pdf, but they are very slow due to their large size.

Story

The predecessors of guidebooks appeared in ancient times. For example, the book of the ancient Greek historian Pausanias “Description of Hellas” is built on the principle of a guidebook, which examines in detail the sights of Greek regions and cities. Existed in Ancient Rome the prototypes of the guidebook, road guides (Itineraria), were of two kinds: 1) Itineraria adnotata or scrípta - road schedules that contained only the names and distances to places along a known route; 2) Itineraria picta, consisting of distance measurements and geographical maps.

In the Middle Ages, literary works were created containing descriptions of routes for pilgrims. We can distinguish two genres of such literature - guidebooks themselves (practical information and recommendations on the route) and “walking” (descriptions of completed trips). The first of the medieval “guides” that have come down to us is considered to be the “Bordeaux Traveler,” compiled by a resident of the city of Bordeaux, who visited Constantinople and Jerusalem in 333. The first part of the book is taken up by listing settlements on the route Bordeaux-Milan-Constantinople-Jerusalem, indicating the distances between them. The second part of the essay contains short description Palestinian holy places, some monuments biblical history, their location is indicated.

The oldest known examples of this genre in Ancient Rus'- “The Life and Walking” of Abbot Daniel to Jerusalem and the Holy Land (beginning of the 12th century), unique in its historical value, and “The Book of the Pilgrim” by Anthony, Archbishop of Novgorod, about his “walking” to Constantinople (late 12th century). And the most famous and, probably, the most perfect is “Walking across Three Seas” by the Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin. The abundance and reliability of factual material in his records were for his time a valuable source of information about India and Persia. Thanks to the author’s observation and literary gift, this outstanding work, of course, goes beyond the scope of the guidebook; it is recognized as a significant monument of ancient Russian literature and has been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

At the same time, a certain utilitarianism of the genre remains. The fact that a particular work belongs to a guidebook lies precisely in the author’s desire to suggest the “path”, explain how it is easier to get there, and so on. For example, “A detailed description of the route... from Rushchuk through Shumla... showing a way to lead and feed 30 to 40 thousand troops” was clearly written with the goal of enlightening those who will pave this route. This also includes address calendars, for example, the famous St. Petersburg address directory Georgi. A number of other guidebooks are compiled more to help the reader find what he is looking for, and therefore focus on descriptions. Sometimes this is done in a wonderful literary and artistic form. These include Strakhov's "Pocket Book..." about Moscow.

On the contrary, those publications where the emphasis is on descriptions of events without regard to the utilitarian value of this information can be classified as memoirs. However, genre boundaries are vague and arbitrary. The initial stage of the tradition of publishing full-fledged guidebooks in Russia can be dated back to the end of the 18th century.

The beginning of the modern stage in the history of the development of the guidebook as a genre geographical literature and as a special type of book publication is associated with the name of Karl Baedeker (1801-1859), who founded in 1827 German city Koblenz publishing house of guides to various countries, their capitals and other cities. His guidebooks were very popular in Europe, translated into many languages, the name “Baedeker” became a common noun for publications of this kind, including in Russian. It was the “baedekers” with their scrupulous approach to the selection and display of information that served as models for the best Russian guidebooks of the mid-19th - early 20th centuries. Along with translated compilations from the Baedekers and other similar publications, Russia also appeared in Russia with its own luxuriously published guides to foreign countries"Russian Baedeker", equipped with " detailed description countries with the appendix of many plans and multi-colored maps, including a large one topographic map"(see, for example,). The format and bright red bindings leave no doubt that their creators were inspired by Baedeker books. The further development of the genre was closely related to the emergence and development transport infrastructure(Firstly railways and steamship service). Traveling for entertainment (that is, tourism itself) has become accessible not only to the privileged layers of society, but also to the middle- and even low-income part of it. Guidebooks also appeared to meet the needs of new travelers. They did not differ in completeness of information, big amount attached maps and diagrams, high quality printing. But in them, at an affordable price, one could find a set of geographical, historical and other useful information practically necessary for a traveler.

The first Russian guidebooks

• A detailed description of the route of the extraordinary and plenipotentiary Russian imperial embassy, ​​after the Peace of Yassy, ​​from Rushchuk through Shumla to Constantinople, in 1793 year. With military remarks about the land, showing a way to lead and feed from 30 to 40 thousand troops / Note. ON THE. Osokina // Russian antiquity, 1878. - T. 21. - No. 1. - P. 100-124.
• Strakhov N.I. A pocket book for old men and old women, brides and grooms, young and old girls, dandies, helipads, red tape, gamblers, etc., who come to Moscow for the winter. or Allegorical instructions and advice for them, written by the author of the Satirical Messenger. – Ed. 2nd. – Part 1. – M.: Univ. typ., in Ridiger and Claudia, 1795 . – 107 p.

Series of guidebooks in Russian

• Insight Guides
• Le Petit Futé - over 100 guidebooks
• National Geographic Traveler
• Nelles Pocket - 24 guidebooks published
• Gourmet Atlas
• Poster - 21 guidebooks published
• Around the world - more than 120 guidebooks published
• Golden Globe (with small brochure attached)
• Berlitz culinary guide
• Polyglot - about 130 guidebooks
• A hundred paths - a hundred roads
• Your guidebook (series of guidebooks by K. Gensch) - 12 guidebooks published

see also

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation.

Synonyms

See what “Guide” is in other dictionaries: Guide...

Spelling dictionary-reference book GUIDE GUIDE, guidebook, husband. (book). 1. Leader, leader (obsolete). Let me be your guide. 2. A book containing information and instructions necessary for the trip. Railway guide. || Any information... ...

Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary Cm …

Synonym dictionary guide - guidebook: A directory containing information about any geographical location or cultural and educational institution (event), arranged in an order convenient for following or viewing. Source …

Dictionary-reference book of terms of normative and technical documentation GUIDE, me, husband. A reference book about what n. historical place , museum, tourist route. P. around the city. P. in the Moscow region. P. according to the Hermitage. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 …

Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary Guide - The guide consists of ten articles summarizing Lem’s views on those issues that he repeatedly addressed in his texts and which he approached as problems. Frequency of circulation in itself cannot be an argument, Lem has... ...

Lem's World - Dictionary and Guide A reference publication containing information about the country, city, tourist route, historical and artistic monuments, etc...

Synonym dictionary Big Encyclopedic Dictionary - A directory containing information about any geographical location or cultural and educational institution (event), arranged in an order convenient for following or viewing. [GOST 7.60 2003] Publication topics, main types and elements of EN ...

Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary Technical Translator's Guide - reference a publication that helps to explore the sights described in it, museum exhibits , streets and squares of cities, etc. Its composition is often subordinated to recommended sightseeing routes...

Publishing dictionary-reference book I; m. A reference book containing information to help you navigate a trip, travel, museum, etc. P. around the museum. P. around the city. Brief paragraph on the Hermitage. Use a guidebook. Purchase item. The route was chosen according to the guidebook. * * *… …