adamsjoha

My wife and I used Fodors guidebook to plan a two-week trip to Spain in May 2010. Fodors should expand the section on driving in Spain to discuss the frustrating difficulty of finding a city hotel when driving. I had detailed directions and maps of sorts, but the directions were almost useless because most city and town intersections are either unlabeled or signed so as to be visible to pedestrians only. Fodors [and other guidebooks] should alert readers to get in advance the best street maps possible, maps that show and label every street and alley with name and one-way direction. Then email the hotels to ask the location of the nearest well-marked public parking lot or garage on a main street. If one does not find the hotel right away, then go to the parking garage, leave the car, and search on foot. In some cases, it is best to leave the car in the parking garage and roll your bags to the hotel. Another useful tactic is to stop at the first hotel encountered and ask for a local map and additional directions. By contrast, roads between urban areas were well-marked and driving was easy.

joannyc

You could also bring along your GPS with the European maps loaded. Enter the address of the hotel and it will direct you there.

Aduchamp1

There is not one experienced traveler on the Spain board who recommends driving in the cities and that goes for many European cities as well.

Do not blame Fodor's or any other guide, it is one of the difficulties of traveling.

Fashionista

Most of the European cities are now on street view. I plan my route and then have a virtual 'drive' before I go.

Any one who drives in Spanish, Italian or Greek cities is either brave or fool hardy. In some countries we drive on the left, in others on the right, but there, they drive in the shade.

adrienne

It's frustrating to find hotels in towns or villages also. I avoid driving in cities. Sometimes you have a map with street names but there are no street signs. It's always a mystery what to do then! LOL

I write the hotel name and address on a piece of paper and then hang out the window asking pedestrians where the heck the place is. It's a game to see what town takes the longest to find the flipping hotel!

Mallary

I email all the tourist offices in all the towns I plan to use as a base as well as the towns we might visit on our day trips. I usually only request a map because most of the information I use I find online at Fodors, etc. Nearly all my requests were met with a few places referring me to their web site for information.

The larger towns have maps of the town with an enlarged map of the Old Town. They also show parking lots. We have found waiting to arrive in town to go to the tourist office to get a map does not work well. Small town and village offices are not open 7 days a week. Also if your arrive during the noon hour (nonn to 2-3) they will be closed. Having the maps before hand helps us make the most of our time in a new town.

We also take our own GPS with addresses of hotels and attractions already programmed in before we leave home. I always have a road map too in case our GPS dies like it did a few weeks ago in France. We were able to ge back to our hotel with no problem. For the first time our Peugeot Lease car had built in GPS although the instruction were in French. We were able to translate enough with a travel dictionary to use the built in GPS for the rest of the trip.

As far as parking in a public garage, we have found that many hotels that offer their own garages neglect to tell you that there is safe street parking available at no charge or that parking is free from 6pm until 8 or 9 the next morning. We ask about street parking when we check in and have always been given good information.

greg

Each guidebook decides what type of readers to target. Without a market focus, the guidebook will get be too heavy and too difficult to find the information. Rick Steves's guidebook, for example, focus on beginning DIY people and describe what to do in detail. However, for the same reason his books get dinged for being opinionated and characterized as laboring on details on items that seem trivial for the experienced travelers. Fodor's seems to target audiences who only want raw information without being told the merits of traveling one way over another.