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Before you visit anywhere its a good idea to study up on it. That way you usually get the best value out of your trip. There are so many places in the world to visit that often we only get to go to a place once. Don't be kicking yourself for missing what you could have seen by just not knowing about it before your trip!
There are a lot of excellent guides out there but the problem is that the world changes every day and after a few months or even years that guide that was very good is now completely out of date and just about useless. Guides tend to be the size of healthy pocket books and visiting several locations might mean carrying several of them -that just doesn't make sense.
Another thought to keep in mind is that despite the great power of the Internet and the vast amount of information it contains not every location you may wish to visit is on the internet. This may seem obvious to you but after a while we sort of get brainwashed that everything we need to know is on Google. Not true. You can still find out more from local knowledge, a local newspaper, the local librarian, the local police officer, barber, restaurant or whatever. And there is a balance in there too. It isn't necessary to read a guide book on everything. Where is your sense of adventure! They can help but use your common sense and brain and you can also help yourself. I remember as a young university student hoping on my Honda 350 and driving from Guelph, Ontario to Daytona Beach, Florida without a map and it was a great adventure and I made it there and back too! Today, a GPS would be nice. Some modern phones have built in GPS and computers cameras and work on just about any network. You can even send e-mail.We have located some guides that are updated on a continual basis with fresh information and some travel books which are just excellent!.
CIA WORLD FACT BOOK What better organization to do a world fact book than the Central Intelligence Agency! A huge amount of up to date facts at your fingertips.
Google Maps Now this is a resource that is absolutely wonderful and free too. For those of you that have used it a few times you will understand much better what you can do with it. If you have just looked at it a couple of times and not tried it out very often it really deserve a few minutes of experimentation. As an example when you wish to get from point "A" to point "B" you simply type the two locations in and google maps does the rest. One thing that you might not see right away is that google will suggest a route but you can change that simply by using the add a destination option and then google will use the new directions. This is a fabulous tool for trip planning. You can print off the information or place it in a flash memory drive or you laptop or pda.
Google Earth will give you a satellite image of an area that you are going to visit and again a few minutes of experimentation say with an area such as your home area will let you know what the program can do for you. Note that it also gives you elevations too. How cool is that! Comes in two flavors one free the other $400. I use the free one and it's excellent. If I had a specific use for it the paid version would be a good option too but I don't have that need. You might. Well worth your time to spend several minutes playing with it and seeing what it can do. The street view is particularly good for a traveler and is well worth the investment of a few minutes of your time to figure out.