Do you still believe in Gurus? Even more have you ever consult one? Well lets go stright to the point. This is one of the real truths about travelling: Gurus are cool, they are your friend. No matter how much you think you know about something, after consulting a travel guru you will realise how little you really knew and how close you were to get your holidays ruined for ingnoring their advice.
I am talking about the web gurus sites of course, they work same way as a "traditional" guru will do. Let's say as a mentor, counsellor, advicer, but giving you advice about. Things that really matter when you travel
For those who think air tavel in economy is bad, well it can be actually hell if you dont choose your seat carefully. But how can one person do that before getting into the aircraft and see the cobfiguratiob for yourself. Well the answer is easy. Check seatguru.com and you will have an analysis if all aircraft configurations of the major airlines in every travel class. This way you can avoide the seat beside the toilets where everybody queues, or beside the kitchen galley where the noise of the dishes or the air hostesses gossiping wont let you sleep. Also you can double check that they dont give you the seat on that specific row that amazingly has even less leg room than the normal ones.
This is just one example, if you are a keen surfer or widsurfer check windguru.com or magicseeweed.com and will get the right beach to go every day and the right time to do so
If you are concerned about hotels try tripadvisor.com but careful with this site. It is useful but only if you use it wisely. Be aware for instance that the average user of this site is obviously looking for good hotels but also whithin budget. So the best ranked ones are not necesarily the best ones in town. Also do not read just one comment. Try to read a few. You will discover some patterns. Some people post similar comments under different names either to complement the hotel ( the owners normally, easy tonspotnas everything is perfect and they had the holidayof their lives) or to ruin the hotel reputation ( the owner of the hotel across the road, easy to spot because everything is negative and hotel looks worse than a prison)
One exception, always trust bad comments about hotels in the UK, they are always right, except for few of them hotels there are really bad.
And one final piece of wisdom, restaurants guru sites are hard to rate as individual taste is so diverse and also restaurants change quickly and not always are consisting. My fauvorite restayrant guru site is frommers guide. Ifnyoubare travelling in Spain or Portugal, guiacampsa.es or viamichelin.es offer good advice except for Madrid and Barcelona.
Ps forgive me if tonights spelling is not perfect. Its late at night and waiting for a connecting flight (by the way, I hope seatguru was right and gotnthe right seat, I need to sleep!
Bril....the advice re Trip Advisor I will take on board. I use that site every time I go to a hotel abroad and last year in Greece we found that the good comments on our hotel were from the people who were pals with the owner but we didnt think much of the hotel at all ! The Guru thing is genius...signed Guru G - Relationship expert !!X
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