I Love to Destroy a Perfectly Good Guidebook

One of my coworkers just came into the copy room to find me brutally ripping apart a brand-new guidebook.

“Oh, heading out soon?” she asked.

Around my office, people know that there are two sure signs I’m about to leave on another guidebook research trip: I get a really short haircut. And I start tearing up books.

Years ago, Rick Steves taught me the art and science of prepping a guidebook to be updated. As he likes to say, “Why haul 100 pages about Barcelona to dinner in Madrid?” I’m rarely updating an entire book, and if my goal is to pack light, it’s foolish to bring along more paper than I need.

Here’s the procedure: First, crack open the spine to the sections you need, and neatly — surgically — slice between the splayed pages with a sharp utility knife. When you have all of the bits and pieces assembled, you stack them up, bind them together with an industrial-grade stapler, smooth over the rough staples with mailing labels, and slap a strip of heavy packing tape along the spine.

After 30 minutes in the copy room, I cut the amount of books I’m hauling to Europe by two-thirds. I’m ready to go.

cameron-books

I’m taking off shortly for springtime in Europe. My itinerary kicks off in the Cinque Terre (Italy’s Riviera) before stops in Tuscany, Salzburg, the Austrian Alps, and the Italian Dolomites. That’s all updating guidebooks. Then I board a plane for Sofia, where I’ll be working with Rick and his film crew to produce two new public television shows on Bulgaria and Romania. And finally, I’ll hop a train to Budapest to update that book, too.

I hope you’ll stow along with me over the next several weeks. I’ll be posting fresh updates and new photos all along the way.

See you on the road!

8 Replies to “I Love to Destroy a Perfectly Good Guidebook”

  1. Hey Cameron,

    I just finished this process up last night. 3 weeks in London/Scotland/Ireland would be an awful lot of book weight. Broke them up into small chunks. Now we can just grab what we need for a given day of sightseeing and throw them away as the trip progresses – more room for the bottle of Talisker I have my eye on.

    By the way, thanks for all the great pictures and blog posts from Scotland. They were a good inspiration for my trip planning. We are even going to manage to hit the Highland Games in Kenmore – really looking forward to that!

    1. Glad to help! And I’m hope you got the brand-new Scotland book, with all of the latest info. You’ll love the Highland Games. I made it to three last summer (two on purpose, one was a happy accident)…they were definitely a highlight of my time in Scotland. Happy travels!

  2. Wow Cameron,

    It IS a new touring year. I’m certain I’m far from the only one who is ‘watching and listening’ as you set out again. And your fans are still awaiting the release of your finds from last year. I might be a bit beyond the physical ability to travel the Rick Steves way…but I can still enjoy armchair travel via your posts and the Rick Steves guide books!

  3. Cameron – Don’t know your actual schedule, but I’d love to meet up in Salzburg, if you’re there when I’m there; May 12, 13, and 14. I’ll give you the low-down on Budapest, as I’ll have been there the prior 4 days. :)

  4. Why take that paper with you? I don’t destroy my guidebooks. Instead I scan the pages I need (on my printer/scanner combo, which most printers are these days) and load them onto the small tablet I travel the world with. My tablet is my guidebook, my jukebox and the place I offload my photos from my camera AND it easily fits into my day bag.

  5. I really wish I kept a picture of it, but when my husband and I went to Germany and Austria and also with Italy I bought the Moleskine travel journals because they had such great Maps in it and I could mark them with where we wanted to go and where we stayed. I Frankensteined them by cutting out a lot of the empty pages and merged all books into one. For the cities that didn’t have their own Moleskine guide I printed out the subway maps, city maps and whatnot and created my own fold out map and destination list.

    A lot of what I read in the travel books I would either cut out and paste into the journal or write into it and coordinate with the maps. It sure helped with narrowing things down and making looking up things quick and easy.

  6. I’m a huge fan of the show and the blog, but I almost returned my copy of the Budapest guide when some slimmer guides showed up in my bookstore. That would have been a terrible mistake. The advice about which baths to visit and how to work the complicated system was easily worth the cost of the book alone.

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