Travel Essentials - Planning your trip with Nota Bene

These are the perfect travel guides to have when you are choosing where to stay or where to dine. It is truly like having a well-travelled companion give you a personal and detailed review of all the chicest places to be seen.

Is there anything missing? Well, given that the travel guides are obviously aimed at wealthy travellers who are very concerned with what is luxurious, hip and cool, I would have liked to see a section in the guides rating the top spas in the area. Also, since many of the guides are vacation destinations, listing spas would be especially useful.

A minor complaint; I brought a Nota Bene guide with me on a recent trip to London and visited some of the places they mentioned. Most turned out to be somewhat close to what they described, but one hot spot I attempted to visit (by taking a $30 cab ride to) was, as many clubs in London are, members-only. The doorman wouldn't even let me in when I (shame on me) showed him my press card. Needless to say, it would have been useful to know this ahead of time. That said, I did also take a Nota Bene with me to St. Moritz, and found no obvious discrepancies in that issue; Although St. Moritz is really all about being chic--and it's all anyone talks about--so it's not very hard to find out what's hip there.

The best thing about these travel guides is the first four pages, where they describe, like a true insider, the dynamics of the city. I found these descriptions to be quite accurate--it's obvious they talked to many locals to come up with this information.

All in all, true insider guides. You'll still need the typical Eyewitness or Frommers guide for complete information and maps, but these travel guides should be all you need in terms of finding a perfectly hip place to sleep and eat.

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Written by Hilary Rowland, Editor-in-Chief of HILARY Magazine, North America's most popular online women's magazine filled with hip travel reviews, fashion trends, product reviews and contemporary culture.