Lawyers of Boston

Fodor's Boston 2010 (Fodor's Gold Guides)

Description

Fodor’s. For Choice Travel Experiences.

Fodor’s helps you unleash the possibilities of travel by providing the insightful tools you need to experience the trips you want. Although you’re at the helm, Fodor’s offers the assurance of our expertise, the guarantee of selectivity, and the choice details that truly define a destination. It’s like having a friend in Boston!

•Updated annually, Fodor’s Boston 2010 provides the most accurate and up-to-date information available in a guidebook.

•Fodor’s Boston 2010 features options for a variety of budgets, interests, and tastes, so you make the choices to plan your trip of a lifetime.

•If it’s not worth your time, it’s not in this book. Fodor’s discriminating ratings, including our top tier Fodor’s Choice designations, ensure that you’ll know about the most interesting and enjoyable places in Boston.

•Experience Boston like a local! Fodor's Boston 2010 features the best New England clam chowder, where to watch the Boston Marathon, and how to snag tickets to see the Red Sox play at legendary Fenway Park.

•Indispensable, customized trip planning tools include “Top Reasons to Go,” “Word of Mouth” advice from other travelers, and tips to help save money, bypass lines, and avoid common travel pitfalls.

•Full-color pullout map

Visit Fodors.com for more ideas and information, travel deals, vacation planning tips, reviews and to exchange travel advice with other travelers.

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-18
Summary: "The best laid plans"

I bought this book for my Dad for Father's Day. My parents had just booked a trip to New England in October to see the turning of the leaves. I though this would be a great way to help them plan and add a little more excitement to the planning process. They LOVED it. They both read it within the first two days and called to tell me that they have now mapped out %90 of their trip around this book! Great tool for planning trips!!!

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-04-07
Summary: "FODOR'S GUIDE ALWAYS DELIVERS"

After buying almost every brand of travel guide out there, I always come back to Fodor's. I like the organization of the information and I trust its reviews. I know that with Fodor's I can rarely go wrong. It also makes for very pleasant and interesting reading.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-03-25
Summary: "Boston Travel"

This was a gift for my oldest grandaughter who will be making her first trip to Boston in June. I had the travel guide mailed diretly to her and I never saw it. She said it was great and will be a big help in planning her sightseeing tours.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-02-19
Summary: "Fodor Guides are Quick and Easy For the Basic Traveler"

When looking at the travel section of a local bookstore, the impressive logo of Fodor's travel guides would certainly grab attention. Yet out of all the travel guides available, what is to make one choose Fodor's to take home? Fodor's has many titles in its library, and the practice shows. Each guide is heavily researched and presented in an easy to read way. At first glance, the guides are organized, colorful and full of information. Maybe not small enough to stuff into a fanny pack, but definitely worth it to try to fit it into a suitcase to bring along for the ride.

Fodor's is published by Random House Inc., a large publishing house that also publishes National Geographic's travel guide series. Yet Fodor's seems to be aimed at a slightly different traveler. National Geographic is usually written by one author, while Fodor's is written by a collection of contributors, thereby fleshing out each destination by adding different points of views as to what is or is not important. So while National Geographic is good for those who need a little more personality in their guides, Fodor's is great for people who want to form their own opinions about sightseeing or things to do. Fodor's wide range of those very things makes the selection for yourself that much easier. Fodor's price ranges are a bit higher, more aimed towards someone out of school with a more disposable outcome, or families with money to spare. The books themselves, for example, are usually priced around twenty dollars. However, the price of the guide is different wherever one seems to look. The store Barnes and Noble sold the New England Guide for around $19 and the India guide for around $24. On Amazon.com, the book used can be as low as $8.95 or, new for $16.46. [..] sells it online for $19.99 and free shipping. So while this book may be an investment if bought new, used it could be a steal and extremely worth it for the price. Therefore, Fodor's is more for people who want to stay mostly in the city to spend money, or for those that enjoy guided tours. Not a guide for going off the beaten path, to be sure.

With a simple layout, colors and words, Fodor's is not supposed to be a challenge for any reader. Each guide, while it could be read through to the end, lends itself more towards looking up quick reviews and information, or history of a place. As a more of a collaborative effort, Fodor's does not lend itself to someone looking for lyrical prose about a destination, but for quick facts. An easy index and table of contents helps these quick facts to be found just as quickly. The few descriptive sentences, phone numbers, websites and mail addresses are for quick reference and very helpful to boot. Especially for people on the go or those who are lost, numbers and websites are very helpful. Also important is the ability to book reservations or availability. Only a few restaurants, hotels and things to do have short descriptions, and it is a safe bet that all of these places have been picked and approved by the Fodor team. If visitors deemed a site unworthy, it would look badly for Fodor and Random House. Therefore it is in the best interest of the publishers to give the best information available. This seems to be so important for Fodor that for some cities there is a new edition each year.

What's great about Fodor's is the extra information they add it, perfect for going someplace new. The front inside cover has conversions for things such as shirt and shoe size, while the back inside cover had a map of the London underground for the London guide, and the T subway system for the Boston guide. Also at the front of each guide were some historical information, month and temperature chart for the year, free things to do, top 5 things to do and other fun lists, charts and maps. For Boston, for example, it was nice to see a section specifically on the Freedom Trail, a walking tour that interests many tourists and young school children alike. In each Fodor's guide, there is a rating system in place for both prices and things that are most recommended. In the American guides, price ranges are $-$$$$, or cheap to very expensive. In the European additions, the rating is in Euros. For places that are deemed especially worth a visit or price tag, the words `Fodor's Choice' and a star appear next to the description for extra assurance. The city editions, the guides that Fodor's seems to spend the most resources on with colored guides and new editions, are set up by neighborhood, making it easier to focus travel and sightseeing to a small radius of the city at the time. Further separated are places to eat, things to do and fun facts. Sometimes there is even a box set aside just for children, and usually there is a box set aside for specific reader's feelings and tips about certain places. All of this extra information only adds to the reason's why Fodor's is a great guide for trips to new places.

Is Fodor's worth the price or weight? For the information and easy to read layout, the answer is yes. They do not cover everything, but they do cover the basics. Maybe not for someone who wants to dig deeper into what is available to explore off regular tourists' radar, Fodor's is more geared towards a basic traveler with basic needs, maybe a fun place to go sightseeing here and there. Not that Fodor's is bland, on the contrary, it was written to not just spit out information, but to deliver it in a way so as to better be of use to the reader. It is straightforward enough to not overload, but not it is meant to be a love letter to city or country. It presents the facts, some fun things to do, and very little about the culture. So while Fodor's may be handy for a quick trip, it is not good for a longer trip of more than a week or so. If one were looking forward to interact more with the natives, for example, Fodor's does not offer much in way of specific differences or attitudes that a culture may present. Only a few noticeable culture points for a regular traveler are presented. However, if one's main objective when traveling was sightseeing and the like, Fodor's is just the thing to look at and use. Unfortunately, when looking between different guides, some discrepancies were noticed. While bright colors and pull-out maps were available for well travelled places such as Boston and London, other places that may not be easy to get to- India in particular- only have some orange detailing, and if there is a picture, it is sure to be in black and white. So while Fodor's is a good buy for popular places, one should be sure to check out each guide before purchasing.

Both a positive and a negative, the only main problem with Fodor's is the lack of authorship. Each book is generated with little to no personality only because it is a series. So while it is good to be unbiased, the lack of personality can be a bit disappointing when trying to gauge what you will and will not like. Sometimes it is worth it to check out a novel or travel writing by a single author, to try and find out more of the personality of the place you are planning on visiting. It is also prudent to research multiple guides for the place you are travelling, to gather as many angles as possible. Although, if looking for quick information in one place, Fodor's can't be beat.