Student and City Guides Head List of New Titles

ON THE LOOSE IN CALIFORNIA With Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon 1993 (Berkeley Guides/Fodor’s, $14.50 paper); ON THE LOOSE IN EASTERN EUROPE 1993 (Berkeley Guides/Fodor’s, $15.50 paper); ON THE LOOSE IN MEXICO 1993 (Berkeley Guides/Fodor’s, $14.50 paper); ON THE LOOSE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST AND ALASKA 1993 (Berkeley Guides/Fodor’s, $14.50 paper).

The popular “Let’s Go” series of budget-minded travel guides, produced annually by Harvard Student Agencies and both researched and produced by Harvard students, has new competition, from a well-known university on our own coast. The Berkeley Guides, subtitled “The Budget Traveler’s Handbook,” are written by (according to their official byline) “Berkeley Students in Cooperation with the Associated Students of the University of California (Who Know What Cheap Travel Is All About).” Printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink, they are veritable fonts of information about budget hotels and motels, cheap restaurants, hostels, grocery stores, student discounts and the like--from a converted cowboy bunkhouse in the Sierra where a bed costs $8 a night to a diner in Chihuahua City that Tom Waits would love.

THE TIME OUT AMSTERDAM GUIDE (Penguin, $15.95 paper); THE TIME OUT NEW YORK GUIDE, 2nd edition, by Mary Trewby, (Penguin, $14 paper); THE TIME OUT PARIS GUIDE, 2nd edition (Penguin, $14 paper).

London’s Time Out is a very hip city magazine--breezy, irreverent, politically correct, yet quite happy to review posh hotels and three-star restaurants alongside the pensions and cafes. These snappy, up-to-date city guidebooks are written and designed in the same style as Time Out itself, and are both easy and enjoyable to read. (There are photos aplenty, and advertising is accepted--rather unusual for guidebooks of this sort, but in this case not at all obtrusive.) Besides all the usual sorts of information--the restaurant listings are particularly savvy and wide-ranging--the books include special and rather extensive sections on places and events of special interest to women, children and gays. Two examples of Time Out’s orientation: An essay on “The First New Yorkers” in the New York guide begins, “Treachery, pillage and plunder laid the foundations for modern New York. . . . “ And the section on “Amsterdam by Area” in the Amsterdam guide promises, and delivers, specific recommendations on everything “from art for art’s sake to sex for sale.”

ALPINE EUROPE 1993: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia, Switzerland by Margaret Zellers (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); AUSTRALIA 1993 by Zeke and Joan Wigglesworth (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); BRITAIN 1993 by Joseph Raff (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); CHINA / PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 1993 by Ruth Lor Malloy (Fielding/William Morrow, $17 paper); THE GREAT SIGHTS OF EUROPE ON AND OFF THE TRADITIONAL TRACK 1993 by Patricia and Robert Foulke (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); ITALY 1993 by Lynn V. Foster and Lawrence Foster (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); MEXICO 1993 by Lynn V. Foster and Lawrence Foster (Fielding/William Morrow, $15 paper); SCANDINAVIA 1993: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland by Martha Berman (Fielding/William Morrow, $17 paper).

“The All-New Fielding Guides for Today’s Traveler,” reads the legend on the covers of this fresh crop of guidebooks, which come complete with flashy new graphics, new research and what seems like more consciously stylish writing throughout. These are good standard introductions to their areas, but, in general, they seem to lack the wit and spunk of the titles in several other popular guidebook series.

THE WORLD’S BEST: The Ultimate Book for the International Traveler, 5th edition, edited by Kathleen Peddicord, (Agora Inc., $29).

This large-format guidebook to what are said to be the finest hotels, restaurants, museums, parks, sports facilities, wines, shopping and more on six continents is an ambitious work, obviously aimed at that class of travelers who don’t want to waste their time on “inferior” experiences. Unfortunately, the intellectual and sensual poverty of this approach quite aside, the book seems so riddled with inaccuracies and out-of-date information that it is hard to take its recommendations seriously. A few examples: Le Chantecler in Nice does not serve “the excellent inventions of chef Jacques Maximin”; Maximin left the restaurant in 1988 (and this edition of “The World’s Best” carries a 1992 copyright). The Roussillon in France does not stretch “from the Pyrenees to the Rhone Delta” but ends a good 80 or 100 miles shy of the Rhone. And does anybody really believe that the best restaurants in Los Angeles are the Polo Lounge, Le Dome, The Dynasty Room (in the Westwood Marquis Hotel) and Scandia--the last of which, anyway, has been closed since 1989? Indeed!

Note : In an article on travel bookstores which appeared in these pages Dec. 6, I inadvertently omitted the American Youth Hostels Travel Centre in Santa Monica, which carries a wide selection of travel guides, maps and travel accessories. The Centre also sells discount rail passes, conducts budget travel workshops and supplies information and services to travelers, youthful and otherwise. In 1993, the store plans to open a Travelers’ Resource Library to allow customers to research travel itineraries and destinations. AYH Travel Centre, 1434 Second St., Santa Monica, (310) 393-3413. Open Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.