During many years I resisted to buy travel guides type of book, one of my complains is that they often have cliché information and some outdated data.
There are also a lot of place you can visit pretty much without any travel guides, Barcelona is such a place, before I went there I printed a few pages from a website, once in Barcelona in the back of a magazine I found a map to locate trendy fashion stores in the center of Barcelona, that was it, I had my map and the pages that was enough to make a successful visit, I spent three fine days there.

I didnt have a map or a travel guide when I was in Madrid, Madrid is very big, I saw nothing of it, some people say just walk, well, it works for some cities and it doesnt for others cities. You can visit a place like Malaga (Spain), Almeria (Spain) or Cannes(France) without any map or guides but you cant do that in Madrid or even here in Brussels.

Now, I do buy travel guides, my rules to buy a travel guide

• 1/ must fit in my jacket pocket
• 2/ must have a map
• 3/should cointains the essential information about the must-see places.

I see three types of travel guides one about a country, one about a city and one about a region or province. I mostly travel from to city to city. So I buy only city guides for my next trip in Benidorm (Spain…some are in Love with Marocco, some are in love with Spain) I will not need a guide or map. The place is very small , they are only beaches. It is possible that I go to Granada the place look awesome everyone keep me telling , shame on me, you havent seen Granada. Well, may be, this time I will see the place, I dont know yet. I think I will make great pictures there. Cant wait , I fly on the 22nd June.

I may go at a “spiritual” retreat in Santa Sofia (Forli), apparently the place is packed with cheap youth hostels, the event itself is cheap, I dont know about the cost of going there, I will see in the coming weeks how planning this trip goes, I have to go in Spain first at the end of this month.
I have plenty of company taxes (yes, I own one) to pay this may kill all my summer trips I will have to be careful.

I have never been in Italy before so it will a 3 days retreat, so I may go in the country for just 4 days …to have a first safe peek at Italy. If Italy is a nice place then I might go more….
The other day, I was talking with my friend Marco (he is from Roma) he said I should go to Italy , I should not be worry about all these stories about italians being racists everything will be fine, I think he is right, this a question of attitude, if you are fine in general , people will be fine to you. Like attracts like;)