About Me

Steven Frischling
Live: HVN
Work: JFK-SFO-CDG-HKG
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Steven Frischling, aka: Fish, is globe hopping professional photographer, airline emerging media consultant working with large global airlines and founder of The Travel Strategist. Fish has racked up more than 1,000,000 miles since he started to track his mileage in 2005.

Fish's travel tends to be less than leisurely, including flying from New York to Basrah, Iraq, for six hours; Hong Kong for eight hours, Kuwait City for two hours and traveling around the world in 3.5 days to shoot a series of photo assignments in 4 cities and 4 countries on 3 separate continents.

Fish grew up at the end of New York's JFK International Airport's Runway 4R/22L, which probably explains his enjoyment of watching planes, fly overhead. When not shooting photos or traveling Fish designs camera bags, hones is expertise on airline security and spends his time at home cheering for the Red Sox with his 3 kids 102 yards from the ocean.

Pocket City Guides – Lonely Planet, Your Guide To The World

02.29.2008 | Author: flyingfish | Posted in Resources

Web: www.flyingwithfish.com – E-Mail: fish@fishfoto.com

29/02/08 – Pocket City Guides – Lonely Planet, Your Guide To The World

Most travelers have experienced the frustration of heading to the bookstore to find an easy to use, small enough to carry, and resourceful guide to a city. Many travelers have found themselves on the floor of the books store surrounded by half-a-dozen books, and none of them give you all the information you want.

When I travel I am often in a city for a day or less, at times two days at most. The information I am seeking for my trips needs to be short, easy to find, and cut to the point. There are many good guides that go into depth about every nook-and-cranny of a city, these books are filled with superficial stories that get you interested but lead you no where, most irritatingly is these books cannot be shoved into your pocket (and most pocket guides are useless). In short order, finding a quick to use, easy to carry, detailed and informative travel city guide seemed like a lost cause to me.

Recently I became acquainted with Lonely Planet‘s “Encounter Guides.” I have been using Lonely Planet‘s web site for years. I have read Lonely Planet books, and I have referred to Lonely Planet on Flying With Fish in the past, so with this in mind I went ahead and purchased a guide to look over. After 15 minutes of looking through the Lonely Planet “Encounter Guide” I realized I had found the pocket sized city guide I had been searching for!

Lonely Planet describes the Encounter Guides as “Discover Twice The City In Half The Time” and they are right! I have used these guides in cities I have traveled to in the past; cities I am acquainted with and they were fantastic. The layout of the books from start to finish allow for easy reference of anything you are looking for. Each book is broken up into logical and easy to find subjects, locations, sites and other useful information. The pack page of many guides is a city transit map, and you will find full colour maps throughout the book Included in the back page of each book is a compact pull out map of the city. The layout and easy design of the map makes it ideal for finding your bearings while on the move.

The physical size of the Lonely Planet “Encounter Guide” is not much larger than a passport. Obviously the book is thicker, but the ‘footprint’ is not much larger. The pull out full colour map that comes with the book is nearly the same size as a passport when it is folded up.

To make my life easier, I use a little Post-It Flags on each page that offers something of interest to me; I have about 18-20 Post-It Flags in each of these approximately 200 page books.

There are currently only 26 Lonely Planet “Encounter Guide” books, but they are producing more.

You can take an interactive tour of these books online at :
www.lonelyplanet.com/encounter

Below are a few images of the books. These images include the books in comparison to a passport, the pullout map with the book, a two page map display and the green Post-It Flags sticking out of the top

Happy Flying!

–Click The Image To Enlarge It–

3 Responses

  1. Michael March 7th, 2008 at 4:56 am

    For a “different” kind of travel guide check the Moleskine City Notebook. Smaller then a passport,
    and full of free space to write your own travel companion. A different approach to a travel companion, but very intresting!!!

  2. flyingfish March 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Michael

    I love Moleskine products. I use their notebooks and pocket memo books constantly!

    You can read my post on the Moleskine products from December 2007 here:
    http://flyingwithfish.blogspot.com/2007/12/25-december-2007-staying-organizedthree.html

    Thanks for suggesting the Moleskine City Guide to the folks reading Flying With Fish. The City Guides are unique and very easy to carry around.

    -Fish

  3. Flying With Fish » iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week : Lonely Planet iPhone City Guide July 2nd, 2009 at 3:18 pm

    [...] Like millions of travellers around the world I am a fan of Lonely Planet’s guides.  Lonely Planet’s pocket sized ‘Encounters’ books can often be found in my bag when travel to certain cities and new cities, in fact I have previously written about these guides here, 29/02/08 – Pocket City Guides – Lonely Planet, Your Guide To The World. [...]

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