A Do-It-Yourself Travel Notebook

books:


	• Moleskine City Notebook Berlin (Moleskine City Notebook) Moleskine Moleskine, 2008 - 228 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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A Do-It-Yourself Travel Notebook

This is a very unusual product and I would strongly encourage anyone considering getting one to be completely aware of what it is before they purchase it. First, if you are looking for a single travel guide to prepare you for your trip to New York (or anywhere else there is a guide for), this is very close to worthless, if not entirely worthless. I would call one's attention to the title of the product. It is a "Notebook." That means that most of the pages are blank. This literally is a book for taking notes in.

So what do you get when you buy this? Every book in the series follows the same format. First there is a personal information page with address, phone, allergies, family doctor, passport number, then map information with public transportation maps. Then follows information on the various forms of transportation with phone numbers and websites, including cabs, buses, other forms of public transportation, and airports. There are some blank itinerary pages, measurement and speed conversion charts, size conversion charts (for shoppers), then a long series of neighborhood maps, including an index. And that's it. The final two-thirds of the notebook are blank. The next 20 or so pages are completely blank and unlined for whatever use you want to put them to. Next come several pages intended for writing down names of restaurants, bars, museums, historical sites, hotels, or whatever. The book also comes with unlabeled tabs with stickers to use as desired (for theaters, concert halls, or whatever you desire) as well as tracing paper for, as the label says, "Itineraries or Whatever." Finally, there is the usual pocket at the back that is found in all Moleskine products.

For some people this is going to be an absolutely useless product. But for many this will be remarkably useful. In fact, I can envision two uses for this notebook. First, those who are planning a trip to one of the places for which Moleskine has produced a book. Let's say one has consulted the Blue guide, the Eyewitness Guide (by DK), a Rough Guide, the Michelin guide, and the Let's Go guide. Maybe you've bought all of these, making for five guides. No way do you want to drag all of these on your trip or more than one on your flight. So what might you do? You might take the Moleskin Notebook, record into it all the places you want to see, restaurants you want to dine at, museums you want to stroll through, and anything else you want to do while in your destination of choice, and record it there. So the Moleskine City Notebook can serve as a distillation of all the various travel guides, web sites, and other resources you have consulted. And instead of hauling about a large Fodor's guide, you can carry about this small Notebook that can easily fit into a backpack, purse, should bag, or even pocket.

The only downside is that the Moleskine City Notebook is only as good as you make it. If you do a good job of planning your trip, it will be filled to the brim with useful and helpful information. If not, it will be as unhelpful as you have made it.

There is a second use to which the City Notebook can be put to use, though it is not one for which it was primarily designed. You could use it for the city in which you live, should you live in one of the cities for which one is made. I live, for instance, in Chicago. I have bought one of these so that I can over time use it to record every bit of helpful information that I might find useful or helpful. I can record what hours the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore (the real one, not the trade version on 57th Street) is open. The hours for the Chicago Public Library and the Newberry Library. Phone numbers of restaurants and addresses of bars. And so on and so forth. Granted, these books will only benefit those who live in one of those cities, but for the U.S. New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are pretty populated areas.

So this is a very well conceived product though it absolutely has to be stressed that it is a specialized one. Please note: THIS ISN'T FOR EVERYONE. If you don't want to use the Notebook to plan your trip it is going to be very close to worthless. I'll emphasize again: this is only as good a product as you make it. But if you use it to help you plan your trip, it could be the single item you would most loathe to be without after your notebook.

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Customized Guidebook

This notebook is perfect for the traveler who wants to pick out his own sites. I took recommendations from other guidebooks I had and put the information in the notebook. If I ran across a good place, I wrote it down. My goal in using this notebook was to have a reference for if/when I return to Berlin. It's perfect for combining information from different source in one place.

This notebook contains maps of the city (with a street index) and maps of the public transit system (with a station index). Indexes are incredibly helpful when you're standing on a street corner but have no clue what part of town you're even in, or what direction you're facing. Trust me - very useful. I carried this notebook everywhere I went, even if all I needed it for was the maps. I loved having a place to write down things that I should do, or places I loved, or other ideas.

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Great Travel Companion

While not a suitable replacement for a travel guide, the Moleskine is very handy for a map and journal. The Notebook content is very flexible to suit your needs and is much more discreet than the more obvious travel guides.

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it. - Charles Baudelaire. The Moleskine City Notebook is a treasurehouse waiting to be filled with experience and observation. The beloved Moleskine notebooks transformed into the ideal traveler's companion serve business traveler and the pleasure traveler alike with elegance and the necessary luxury of great design and excellence in craft. The City Notebook is an ideal gift for a friend, companion, or loved one. It is also an unparalled gift to yourself, a forward-looking investment in experience and memory to carry on your life's journey. The world-renowned Moleskine sense of style and clear, user-focused design combine to help you create an indelible record of your urban odyssey. The new City Notebooks are equally suited to city residents as to visitors, a means of organizing the things they know and need about the city they live in. We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. - Marcel Proust. As we pass through the metropolis, the very sights and acts of our daily lives constitute the fabric of the richest novelistic tale we can ever experience. Commit your travels and insights to paper, deepening that trove of memory and thought. In time, perhaps, your City Notebook will prove as resonant with recall as the celebrated madeleine of Proust. The future is unwritten. Take up your pen and shape it.

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