Gear: Proudly Eurotrash

Product name: Wallpaper City Guides

Made by: Wallpaper

Web Site: www.phaidon.com

Most travel guidebooks seem designed to serve the most basic of interests, providing only a general overview of a place, in order to appeal to as many people as possible. As a result, they rarely explore the more contemporary and exciting aspects of a city. Now, after years of taunting us with their unabashedly Eurotrash vision of how we should travel, Wallpaper magazine recently introduced a beautiful series of city guides printed in a handy small format. Naturally, these guides have many of the the same characteristics as their namesake: they’re snarky, glamorous, and very in-the-know. With guides for more than 40 cities—including Copenhagen, Prague, Tel Aviv, and Dubai—each covers the usual stuff, like hotels and restaurants, while also focusing on more unusual details like architecture and sports (swimming, spas, cricket pitches, and the like). Think of them as how-to manuals on the jet-set lifestyle. Every entry features an excellent photo, which turns out to be one of the most useful things about these books. Where most travel guides provide basic information and background details, Wallpaper focuses on the images—which provides a much more inspiring way to plan any trip.