It’s the way to go!
Travel guidebooks have their place – at home on the bookshelf. Yes, yes, I’ve recommended one guidebook or another, I’ve even worked on a few and I particularly like the DK Eyewitness series for exploring, and Lonely Planet books for places to stay, maps, and basic getting around information. But for the most part, I leave the books at home and travel by my wits, such as they are.
What guidebooks are good for, is using them to study before going on a trip. Getting familiar with an area, a city, or a region before leaving home. It’s half the fun of traveling, spending weeks, or months, researching material, feeding daydreams, becoming familiar, jotting down the names of potential hotels, galleries and museums to visit, or something new to experience at a restaurant.
I keep a journal, of sorts, when I travel. I jot down notes as I go along but I also jot down notes before I leave. Those would be the notes of the places I might like to go to, hotels I might like to stay in and odds and ends of things I’d like to see. But I don’t live, or travel, by this list.
For the most part, when I get into a town the first thing I do is take a walk. I walk aimlessly a lot on my travels, discovering new things along the way, in my own way. I wake up in the morning and pick a neighborhood, or a place, like Cezanne’s studio and Les Lauves in Aix for instance, and spend the day exploring it, getting to know it intimately. After a few days, it’s possible to know a nice portion of a town or city, or of a place, without a guidebook.
Exploring without a guidebook takes me off the beaten path. No itinerary, no book, no maps. I’m not influenced by an author’s generic travels to a place, ones that are explored by every other person who has bought the same guidebook.
The South of France is full of small places to explore and has something for just about anyone. Cities, towns, villages. Renting a bicycle, or even a car, for the day and just taking off into the countryside on a back road will bring Van Gogh’s and Cezanne’s landscapes to life. Many of the smaller villages have bus service, but many of these run on school hours during the school year.
I like to ask people I meet along the way what they liked most about their day. I ask people working behind the counters of the shops or boulangeries what they like about where they live, other travelers about what they liked about their visit to the area. It’s a great way to get information as I go. There is always someone looking for a conversation, even couples like to talk to someone else on occasion and the best source of information are people with whom I cross paths, and who might be having similar experiences at the same time as I am.
This doesn’t mean that you have to actually travel without the book. Take it with you if it makes you feel more comfortable. But consider leaving it in your room when you go out for the day. Instead, flip through it in the morning before you leave each day, to get some ideas of where you might want to go. Then just go!
Did I miss anything? Have a great tip for traveling without a guidebook to The South of France? Tell us by leaving it in the comments below!
Edited: May 16, 2010 (originally written before release of iPhones and online guide applications, but still applies, even to them!)
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Tags: aix, france, no guidebook, provence, tips, travel
