(5 of 5)
Nor has any guide reported that London night life has become the most exciting in Europe, filled with excellent combos, excellent theater, excellent shows and even good food. In Paris, on the other hand, theater is down, ballet and opera were never up, and most of the city's celebrated naughty nighteries have become intolerably cheap and outrageously expensive. Yet as far as the travel guides are concerned, Paris is, was, and ever will be the gayest city in the world, while London is a stuffy place filled with stiff upper lips, bad food and sensible shoes.
Most professional guidebook writers still shape their books for the first-time tourists. But millions of Americans are now second, third and fourth-time tourists, and they are looking for new and exciting things to do. The guides will have to take account of this new reality or else risk losing an important part of their following. Many travelers already rely for their information on journalism, on the generally current calendars of events handed out by government tourist offices—and, above all, on a mass of excellent literary travel books, whose aim is not information but inspiration, not sightseeing but insight.
Still, there is nothing like a good travel guide, with its neat ratings, its tidy categories superimposed on a motley world, its flattering assumption that the reader is boundlessly curious and energetic, and its ability to recreate a trip after it is over. For one test of a good travel guide is not how well it serves abroad but how well it stands up back home. The returned traveler's particular pleasure is to read his guidebook to see where he has been. As he grows more experienced, he discovers an even greater pleasure—to argue with his guidebook and finally ignore it.