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Sometimes when you return from a trip you have the bittersweet feeling you didn’t do as much as you wanted to do. You didn’t visit as many attractions as you wanted, you didn’t find some of the places you wanted to visit, you didn’t find that little coffee house you heard about, and you start thinking that maybe you should have taken a guided tour or something. Of course, a guided tour may be a good solution but if you don’t want to spend your vacations following someone else’s schedule, there are other options to enjoy your destination to the fullest during your next home exchange. Many excellent travel guides from recognized editors are available online to help you plan ahead and find the best places to visit. Combined with Google Maps or your GPS these online guides can help you select and get to those places you just can’t miss.

Today we provide you with a short list of travel guides from around the Web, but there are hundreds of other online resources like blogs and forums fully dedicated to travelling.

Here’s what the travel guides we selected say about themselves:

Fodor’s - “Fodor’s helps you unleash the possibilities of travel by providing the insights and tools you need to experience the trips you want.” http://www.fodors.com/

Frommer’s Travel Guides - “Frommers.com is an essential online destination for those planning the perfect travel excursion.” http://www.frommers.com/

Let’s Go Travel Guides - “For 50 years, Let’s Go has published the world’s favorite budget travel guides, written entirely by students and updated every year. With pen and notebook in hand and a few changes of underwear stuffed in our backpacks, we spend months roaming the globe in search of travel bargains.” http://www.letsgo.com/

Lonely Planet Travel Guides - “Lonely Planet is renowned for its first-hand approach, up-to-date maps and commitment to providing the best information for travellers.” http://www.lonelyplanet.com/

Travellr - “Travellr.com is a question and answer (Q&A) site for travelers to get answers from locals who know.” http://travellr.com/

TripAdvisor - “TripAdvisor® provides recommendations for hotels, resorts, inns, vacations, travel packages, vacation packages, travel guides and lots more.” http://www.tripadvisor.com/

WikiTravel - “Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide.” http://wikitravel.org/