If I'm traveling I always buy a guidebook for the city I'm visiting. I'll buy Lonely Planet, if I have to but I prefer Time Out. Because getting travel advice from the American Lonely Planet is like getting travel advice from a Californian on a sugar high. Everything is AWESOME! You're going to have an AMAZING TIME, meet FANTASTIC people, eat INCREDIBLE food and buy MIND BLOWING souvenirs! So when my vacation isn't earth shattering, I'm a little disappointed. With the U.K. based Time Out, it's different. It's like getting advice from a bitter geezer sitting at the bar in the back of a Pub. "The city's a bit shit but it's alright. Anyway, you have enough time and money to get away from it all unlike the poor sods that were born and raised here. Remember that while you are enjoying yourself, you privileged wanker." After reading that. I always have an AWESOME time!
P.S.
Just the other day I saw a Lonely Planet guide book of Britain in the Self-help and Spirituality Section of a secondhand bookstore in London.
"Where am I in life?"
"You're in Britain you daft cow."
I’m Spring Day (real name, hippie parents)
Moving back to the United States after having lived in Japan and traveling the world for 16 years has been a bit of a head fuck, especially since I now work in the U.K. My blog “The United States of Shock!” is where I give my brilliant and bitter two cents, pence, yen and euro on my experience with culture shock and current events. If you have any questions you would like to have answered in a snit, email them to springdaycomedy@gmail.com