The DC Traveler

Now that the holiday shopping season is officially underway, finding a great gift for someone can be challenging. But how about giving a Washington, DC travel guide?

To make it easy to find a great one, I just completed reviewing three leading Washington, DC travel guides including: 

• Fodor’s Washington, DC 2008, 382 pages, $17.95
• Pauleen Frommer’s Washington, DC, 310 pages, $16.95
• Lonely Planet Washington, DC, 288 pages , $17.99 

To give you an idea of how I reviewed these guides, I compared the guides over a month, using them in side-by-side comparisons of attractions, destinations, hotels, restaurant and more to determine the “best”.  I judged them in the followings areas:

• Comprehensiveness and Accuracy, including the amount of useful and needed information to a visitor (hours, Metro stop, parking, cross street listing, neighborhood safety, etc.). 
• Amount of Additional Background Information, such as history, interesting stories or historical references that may make your visit to that specific location more enjoyable.
• Maps and Photos. 
• Guide Recommendations and Visitor Tips.   

Lastly, I looked at the ease-of-use factor, including the guide’s organization, layout and index.

While each of the guides excelled in different areas, I was looking to determine which guide I would want to take with me, if I were a visitor to Washington, DC.

And my vote goes to the Fodor’s Washington, DC 2008 guide.

This guide by far was the most comprehensive and complete.  It was also the longest, which gives it an advantage being a full 80 pages longer than either of the other two guides.  The aspects I preferred about the Fodor guide were:

• Tons of tips and recommendations, the Frommer’s guide has many  good tips as well.
• Most photos (dozens) mostly black & while scattered throughout the book. The Lonely Planet guide has a a couple brief color photo sections and the Frommer’s guide surprisingly had no photos. 
• Good quantity and quality of maps, almost double that of the Frommer’s guide. The Lonely Planet guide, by my count, had only 5 maps excluding the regional maps at the end of their guide which were nice, combining attractions, dining, entertainment and shopping in one map, but required lots of flipping back and forth.
• Lastly, the Fodor’s guide provided a large tear-out 15″ x 22″ foldable color map with a great map of the Mall area listing every major government building, monument, attraction and Metro station.  The map also has two larger scale area maps, a DC street index and listing of all Beltway (I-495) exits.

Little things such as detailed floor plans of the Capitol Building and White House, a few photos of some of the restaurants (always nice to see a place before you walk in) and excellent historical information woven into each section made this guide come out on top.

The Fodor’s guide was also the ONLY guide to list the summer home of the National Symphony Orchestra and major music venue just outside of DC, Wolftrap Center for the Performing Arts. A big miss by the other two guides.

The Pauleen Frommer’s guide was also very good, don’t get me wrong, but missed in a few areas.

On the notable plus side, was the best walkabout section of the three guides, detailing three walks including Arlington National Cemetery, Georgetown and Embassy Row. The 90-120 minute walks average 12-15 pages of detailed information about the 20+ sites and stops along the way.

The big misses of this guide in my opinion were, first the major attraction site rating system. It listed Arlington Cemetery, as well as the the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials at 2-stars (great) out of 3-stars in terms of “desirability”.  These ratings were equal to a couple not so famous attractions, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Hillwood Museum and Gardens.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was rated at 1-star (very good). I believe all three should be have been rated as 3-star, and continually make my don’t miss attractions Top Ten list. 

Lonely Planet came in a somewhat distant third.  This guide missed the mark on many attractions, mostly by providing little information on a few major attractions, such as devoting only a half-page to Arlington Cemetery, while the other guides provided 10+ pages each.  Another example was George Washington’s Mt. Vernon Estate; Lonely Planet’s description was just one page long, while the other two guides delivered 5+ pages of useful information.  The walking tour section was only 10 pages versus 40 pages for the beefy Frommer walkabout section. The dining guide, while listing many of DC’s notable restaurants, left me a bit confused as the descriptions were too brief, and could easily leave a reader confused regarding if they were walking into a white-tablecloth fancy restaurant or a local “joint”.

I also didn’t appreciate the slanted American politics lesson from Lonely Planet.  Does referencing the 2000 Presidential election and calling the U.S. Electoral Collage system “semi-shadowy”, or calling the the Bush Presidency an “Imperial Presidency” have a place in a travel guide???  I don’t think so.  The guide’s Editor should have reviewed this guide a bit more before going to print. 

And finally, the only thing I felt was missing from all of the guides was a tear-out Metro map.  Each guide provided a Metro map, but not one could you easily take with you, without ripping a page or cover off the book. 

But if you need a Metro map, you can download it to your Apple iPod here.  If you prefer to print a Metro Pocket Guide, click here or call 1-888-METRO-INFO to have one mailed to you.   

                         Happy shopping!

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