Offbeat Eats

As I mentioned in my last article, despite the immense wealth of information available on the internet these days, there’s still a good niche for a properly-written travel guide. And since I’m hot off the heels of my last trip to Edinburgh, I though this would be a good opportunity to review Only In Edinburgh by Duncan J. D. Smith. One of his “Only In” series, these guides are based on his own personal travels, and aim to give you a lot of detailed insight into some of the unique and hidden attractions of a city. And Edinburgh, in particular, makes for a rather nice city for one of his guides.

It wasn’t that long ago that a cornerstone of having the exotic travel experience was the act of heading off to the travel bookstore and picking up a travel guide, and using that as, well, a guide to your travel. Selecting an itinerary, figuring out the sights, finding hotels and meals… The arrival of the internet didn’t change it much, at first. Indeed, it was mostly positive (some guides, like Lonely Planet, really started coming into their own in the internet age, and Amazon certainly made it easier to get obscure titles). But I’ve noticed that in a few cases in recent travels, the market has shifted a bit. Indeed, when discussing the planning of my recent trip to the Faroe Islands (an obscure destination, at least for the non-Danish tourist), I noticed that when I brought out the travel guide (a rather good one from Bradt Guides), more than a few of my friends and a fellow traveler both made comments about “Wow! You’re still using travel guides?! Don’t you have the internet?”