Frommer's Washington DC Day by Day

 One of the things I really like about the Day by Day series by Frommer is that they contain several sections with lists of the "must-sees" in a particular city, sorted by whether you have just one day to spend there, two days, or three days. This really helps to prioritize things when you're visiting. They also have some other sections sorted by interest. If you're an art lover, you can focus on the artsy or cultural attractions. If you're a history buff, the museum section will help. There is a special section for attractions for kids, and another for outdoorsy folks.

Of course, these days, one of the best things you'll find, compactly, in these sort of travel books, are the URLs of important sites you can bookmark and visit as you prepare for your trip, or even once you've arrived. I always try to grab a handful of these out of each travel book I check out. This particular version of Frommers' guide is a pocket version, and even contains a city map that may be handy, and will certainly mark you as a tourist when you whip it out on the National Mall.

I highly recommend the Day by Day guides, in general, and this one in particular, to anyone getting ready for a visit to a new city.

Frommer's Lisbon day by day

As a preface to this review, I'm going to natter on a bit about related issues. I usually have about ten days worth of reviews in the pipeline, scheduled to post, so I don't have to worry about taking a break for recreation interrupting the flow here. I've started to whittle that margin down lately for a couple of reasons. First, I picked up a couple of books that just bogged me down; the first because it's a very complex topic filled with historical detail, so it's just slow going, and the second was difficult to read for emotional reasons - I don't like depressing stories.

I'm hoping to get things back up to speed and ahead of the game again, as in a couple of weeks I'm taking a long awaited vacation to Europe with my wife. I'll attempt to schedule enough book review posts ahead of time to cover it, but I may also "hijack" my blog for a bit during that time to do some liveblogging on my travels, post some pix, etc. If anyone gets upset that I've compromised the purity of my mission here, I guess that's just life. I don't think it's worth my time to start another blog just for my unfortunately infrequent international travel - last time I was out of the States was in 1982.

A few years ago, our family hosted an exchange student from Portugal. He rapidly became just another one of my kids, and it was very difficult to let him go home when the time came. His Portugese family has been asking when we're going to come for a visit ever since, and a serendipitous set of circumstances has given us a sudden opportunity to go. Consequently, I've been burying myself in travel guides lately, which is another reason I'm falling behind on my fiction review blogging.

Lisbon day by day is a wonderful, concise, pocket guide to Lisbon and some of the surrounding areas. The authors have laid out "best of" itineraries for touring the city, based on the amount of time you have to spend, or on your interests. There are special tours for shopping, dining, art, architecture, history, and several other topics. It includes a full sized map of the city in the back of the book, mini-maps of the specific areas in the tours at the beginning of each section, sidebars about great "unknown" places to grab a cup of coffee or enjoy the view (like any of these are actually unknown now that Frommer's has written about them).

Plenty of good tips here, and I think I'm going to renew this at the library just before I leave and take it along with me. Frommer's publishes guides to other cities, as well, and if you're headed for parts unknown, you might want to pick on up and take it along.