When you plan indipendent travel, what guides do you use?

We normally get good travel books.Also search information in the net or friends.

i use to get traveller guide (Map)to the place where i will go,or sometimes love to explore the place that you never been.

I have a few Rough Guides. I like them as they give good detail but put prices in a category, like A is very expensive and F is a bargain. I especially liked the mini books they had for sale last year. It was 25 books about going off traveling. Fantastic! I have even more Lonely Planet guides. They don't ever rave about a place but I like their accommodation listings with actual prices. Lonely Planet on a Shoestring are good guides for people traveling on a low budget. I think transport options in Lonely Planet books are clearly explained. Typically I look at the date of publishing and go for the most up to date. Lonely Planet might be a couple of years ago sometimes. A few times I have got Lets Go guides and found these excellent for accommodation listings. Footprint Guides are ones that I choose sometimes. All these guides seem to be good but I would say Lonely Planet is my favorite.

We are members of the National Trust and like to visit old mansion houses and grounds - to see how the "other half" used to live. Each year a guide to all properties and places is sent to us. We also have a great book called AA of the Road that we've had for several years and there's plenty of places there too. On top of this we have Ordinance Survey maps of practically every location that we've bought of places we've holidayed in over the last 20+ years. :-)

I research the area I am going to visit online before I get there. I also try to get to know someone from the area like here on myLot or on a message board and ask about native secrets that don't get published in the vacationing guides. It was great for our trip last year. It was how I got to go snorkeling with a nurse shark and saw a moray eel.

We usually get the dorling kindersly guides as they are pretty comprehensive and give us all the info we need on all the cultural stuff