Wikitravel Press Blog

Hot on the heels of Marc Heiden’s Hiroshima, the other half of the dynamic duo behind Chicago, Peter “Peterfitzgerald” B Fitzgerald has completed Wikitravel Washington, D.C. (ISBN 1449569412).  As the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. has an extraordinary collection of free museums, and the lion’s share of the nation’s  most iconic monuments. But beyond treasures like the Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian, the city is booming with shopping, dining, and nightlife befitting a world-class metropolis.  As always with Wikitravel guides, this book takes you well off the beaten path to cover every corner of the city and ranges beyond city lines into Northern Virginia and Maryland as well.

The guide retails for $14.99 and is in stock on Amazon.com:

Wikitravel Washington, D.C.: The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable guide to Washington, D.C.

The book is eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping and is generally printed and shipped out within 24 hours of your order.

Stay tuned for more news from Wikitravel Press!

Here at Wikitravel Press, we pride ourselves on updating our guides monthly, but every now and then our revisions go beyond just an update — and that’s the case for two of our titles this month.

Wikitravel Helsinki, our guide to Helsinki’s capital and the surrounding area, has now expanded to take in Finland’s second city Tampere, just an hour and a half away train.  Home to the world’s only Lenin Museum (complete with capitalist gift shop), a Moomin Valley filled with cuddly cartoon characters and the wild nightlife you’d expect from a university town, Tampere is now also Ryanair’s Finland hub and an increasingly popular gateway to the country.  There’s also a new walking itinerary called A seaside stroll in Helsinki, taking in some of Helsinki’s most popular sights and others that usually fly far below the tourist radar.

Wikitravel Singapore, dedicated to the hyperkinetic tropical city-state, has considerably expanded its coverage of Singapore’s outlying areas, with the beaches and Peranakan shophouses of the East Coast as well as historical World War II sites and the latest in dining and nightlife around the North and West of the island.  The recently opened Southern Ridges Walk, a 9-km stroll through normally unseen sides of southern Singapore and across the amazing Henderson Waves, has also been added to the guide.

The updated November editions of both books are out now and available on Amazon.com, and as always, they’re eligible for Free Super Shipping in the United States.  Get yours today!

Here’s a guidebook I’ve been looking forward to for some time: Wikitravel Hiroshima and Western Japan (ISBN 1449541518), edited by Marc “Gorilla Jones” Heiden, one of the two gurus behind our best-selling Chicago guide. This book represents our first foray into a brand new type of market, since to the best of our knowledge, this is the only full-length English-language guidebook ever written devoted to Hiroshima.  A household name due to the world’s first atomic bombing, today’s Hiroshima is a modern, cosmopolitan city with unforgettable museums, lively festivals, and lots of great food and nightlife.  The guide also covers the less-visited side of western Japan, from the sand dunes of Tottori and the deadly culinary delights of Shimonoseki to a climb up the Stone Hammer in Shikoku and a dip in the Bath of the Gods at Dogo Onsen. And with a bit more time, the enigmatic Iya Valley and the epic 88 Temple Pilgrimage beckon…

The guide retails for $14.99 and is in stock on Amazon.com:

Wikitravel Hiroshima and Western Japan: The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable guide to Hiroshima and western Japan

Like all Wikitravel guides, it’s eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping and is generally printed and shipped out within 24 hours of your order.

Stay tuned for more new releases from Wikitravel Press!

After our successful launch on Amazon, the second wave of Wikitravel Press books is now starting to emerge from the incubator, and today I’m delighted to announce the first new title in the series: Wikitravel San Francisco (ISBN 1442169966), edited by John “PerryPlanet” Perry.  Packing a 312-page punch, Wikitravel San Francisco goes beyond tourist-packed Fisherman’s Wharf to give you a local’s guide to one of America’s most fascinating cities, from the hippie vibe of Haight-Ashbury to the digerati dance clubs of SoMa and the dive bars of the Tenderloin, with detailed maps and complete coverage of 14 city districts.  The guide retails for $15.99 and is in stock on Amazon.com:

Wikitravel San Francisco: The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable guide to San Francisco

Like all Wikitravel guides, it’s eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping and is generally printed and shipped out within 24 hours of your order.

In other news, you can now keep up to date with Wikitravel Press at identi.ca and Twitter.  The Wikitravel group at Facebook is also active.  Be sure to join one, since there is plenty of news coming up in the next few months!

After a lot of quiet work in the background, I’m delighted to announce that Wikitravel Press books are now available on the web’s favorite bookstore, Amazon.com.  This also means big savings for our readers, as Wikitravel books are eligible for free super saver shipping (in the United States) if you buy over US$25 worth of any eligible products on Amazon.  The first title to go online is Wikitravel Chicago (ISBN 1440427755), and the rest of the catalogue is expected to be up by the end of November.  Read all about it in our press release, or click below to try it out!

Wikitravel Chicago: The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable guide to Chicago

UPDATE: Amazon is now correctly listing the books as In Stock, instead of the previous erroneous “1-2 weeks”.  This means your book will usually be printed and shipped within 24 hours of your order!

One of the greatest things about our Paris guide have always been the amazingly detailed maps, lovingly crafted by Mark Jaroski from OpenStreetMap and Wikitravel data, but the regular guidebook format doesn’t really do them justice. That’s why we’ve decided to release a special Paris city map book, containing enlarged versions of the maps (A5 sized, or half a sheet of paper), but in glorious full color with a spiral binding, so you can lay it open and keep it open to a given map page as you wander around town. And I have to stress that detailed bit, just take a look at (say) the 13th arrondissement — click to enlarge!

In fact, it’s so big and detailed, we’ve split it across two full pages. All the listings in the main Paris guide are marked on the map complete with listing index, making the city map your perfect travel buddy. Pick one up now!

This blog has been a little quiet lately, but that’s because we’ve been working quite hard on not one, but two fascinating projects and we look forward to announcing them quite soon.  Stay tuned…

But today’s news is that Wikitravel Press will be exhibiting at the Frankfurt Book Fair, in Frankfurt, Germany, in two weeks’ time.  This is the world’s largest exhibition for the publishing industry, with over 7000 exhibitors and nearly 200,000 visitors expected, and we’re excited to have this opportunity to publicize what we’re doing at Wikitravel Press.

Trade days are October 15-17th (Wed-Fri), while the fair opens to the public on October 18 and 19 (Sat-Sun).  You can find us at stand 4.2 E427 (see also hall plan).  Note that we’re not in Hall 3.1 (travel), but next door in Hall 4.2 (scientific publishing), since we’re exhibiting together with our fellow Wiki-to-print enthusiasts PediaPress.  Entry to the fair costs 12 euros for the general public, half that for students.  No book sales allowed until Sunday, but Wikitravellers just might get a free copy of our newly revised Paris guide (while supplies last).  See you there!

Here’s a new guide that’s close to my heart: my old hometown Helsinki, which also covers a few favorite of my favorite spots nearby, including Nuuksio National Park and the delightful little town of Porvoo, soon to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Finnish phrasebook also comes in handy for amusing the natives and scaring everybody else (kalastajamaisuudettomuudellansakaan, anyone?) — but don’t worry, virtually everybody in Helsinki speaks English.

The Porvoo chapter is available as a free download, while the printed book is now available in our online store. Tsekkaa jos et usko!