Do-it-yourself trips are the best, the most fun, the most adventurous and those where you surely learn something, if not on the level of tourism at least you gain in cunning and resourcefulness and in the ability to manage money. They are all good at having pre-packaged trips organized at high costs; satisfaction is also in being able to do everything by spending as little as possible.
Before leaving, however, you have to prepare yourself properly and there is no better way than to get information on the internet to find out where you can save money, where it is worth going and where it is not worth wasting time .
In other articles I have marked the best travel websites with the advice of those who have been there, the sites for finding the lowest airfares and those for booking hotels on the internet with discounts and lower prices.
Below we see 7 websites with guides to download and print before making an international trip, some in English but very useful for discovering recommended places, maps, addresses and references for all places in the world .
1) The famous Lonely Planet commercial guide is also online.
You can navigate the site very easily, choose a region from the Destinations tab and access a written introduction.
The useful thing is the sidebar on the left which offers a full menu for searching for entertainment, hotels, places to see, restaurants and shopping .
The menu brings detailed information on the places in the area, its history, the climate, how to get around and much more.
The map opens from above and all destinations are marked with a small flag.
If there is an interesting place that you would like to keep in mind, you can save that destination by registering on the site.
There are also many images and photographs of many characteristic places and landscapes and allows users to communicate with each other in the groups section.
Lonely Planet is one of the best sites with internet travel guides and, although all in English, it is worth consulting it before each departure and always keeping it on the list of favorite sites.
2) NileGuide is a site that contains many guides to download for free in pdf format .
After marking the place to visit under "Get Started", you get an overview of the place and the guides available and freely to download.
You can also create your own guide by choosing the points of interest on the map.
Above are suggested "Things To Do", restaurants ", bars, clubs and places to have fun.
By playing with filters for the types of things you want to do or see, you can create your own tourist itinerary useful for planning your stay.
You can also select neighborhoods and types of businesses.
To choose an activity, click on "Add to List".
Each guide created can be shared with friends and with all site visitors, in fact the downloadable guides are those considered the most popular and have been created by normal people based on their experience.
From the website, any guide that can be printed can be saved in pdf .
3) Arrival Guides is another site where you can download free international travel guides written by professional journalists, also in Italian.
This site is therefore a large archive of downloadable and printable guides.
Finally here you can find many guides also in Italian for different places in the world where you can travel.
From the home page you can click on Free Travel Guides and then make the Sort for the Italian language and download all the guides available in pdf.
Alternatively, you can search for the guide by destination.
For many destinations, there are customized guides for couples, single girls and boys so you always have the right places to go.
To create customized maps and guides, another three sites are mentioned in another article, including Schmap .
4) Wikitravel is a site that includes over 22, 000 articles with guides written by travelers from all over the world and also in the Italian version .
As in Wikipedia, anyone can edit existing guides, update them or write new ones.
From the main page, you can search for the travel destination, select a region or follow the suggestions of the destinations of the moment that indicate the most interesting places in a given period of the year.
In the toolbox, located at the bottom of the sidebar, you can open a printable version for each page.
5) In Your Pocket focuses on destinations in continental and eastern Europe with the countries and cities of Eastern and Central Europe .
In addition to providing free city guides online, the site contains articles that highlight various topics of interest to travelers, for example, where to ski in Eastern Europe, what to remember to bring to Romania, or a guide to the new museum of the Acropolis in Athens Greece.
All information is available online and city guides are available for download in PDF format, free of charge.
6) OurExplorer is an international English-language site created to meet the need to bring together supply and demand for tourist guides without going through organized travel packages and agencies.
Travelers can thus explore the world through the eyes of a native local without having to go through expensive intermediaries.
After the usual registration, you can search for a tourist guide anywhere in the world and select the local guide in the chosen country.
A complete information sheet is available for each guide, where you can check all the details such as the services offered, age, known languages, city of residence, interests, rates and above all the feedback left by the previous users of that specific guide to find out if you have satisfied or minus the customers.
7) Sites like Plnnr organize tourist visits on the map
8) On the Italian CadillacTrip.it site, you can download and print over 80 travel guides in PDF for free.
Every month a new guide is published on a place in the world where the site really was.
The guides are always free and very detailed.
