Subject: Re: Blue Guide Travel Books?
The Blue Guides are full of information on history and culture and usually have good maps. They contain hotel, restaurant and shopping information, also, but that is not their forte. No color pictures, some black and white, but absolutely full of interesting detail. The people who write them usually live in country and spend a great deal of time researching and traveling before they are written. I always get one if it is available for the place I am traveling to. It is heavy, so you might want to just read it at night. If you can bear to tear pages out of a book (I can't!) you could do that for the day's sites and events.

Lisa in Chicago