I understand why people write travel guides.

There are a few times in life when “normal people” (non academic researchers) do a lot more research into a topic than they otherwise would, such as travel, parenthood, marriage, buying a house, etc.

They are not used to deep research and don’t want to see all that work go to waste after the decision point.

I feel the urge two, but slightly differently.

I typically do a lot of research prior to large holidays. Not to ensure the trip is great per se, but more to help to build anticipation in myself and in my family.

On our last large trip (to Japan), I have the thought of gathering the research into each place we intended to visit into mini-book, just for myself and my eldest son to read (my wife would not care, my youngest may or may not). Just to help build the anticipation and to give some more detailed background as we typically don’t stand around reading plaques or take tours to have things explained to us.

I have this thought again for an upcoming trip (to Greece). The goal would be to make a mini-book (~100 pages) with an audience of two (myself and my eldest) with the goal of providing background on where we are going/what we will be visiting and ultimately in building fun anticipation of the trip.

It will mean that when we are there, we will have a better idea of what we are looking at, why it matters, etc. More than ad hoc/incomplete info dumps just-in-time.

Easy enough.

I was then thinking, I could add a little more content, stuff like:

  • Basic country geography (what are regions called)
  • Basic country history (what happened when)
  • Basic overview of key myths
  • Connect history/myths to places we intend to visit

Not too much scope-creep. About 2-4 weeks of occasional effort. Lots of reading Wikipedia and leaning on LLMs for aggressive summaries. Maybe a few photos of what to expect.

I’d then print-on-demand this “Travel Playbook” so we have read/re-read it prior and then during the trip.

Sounds fun, and a way to turn the research I do anyway into an artefact (i.e. allow it to escape my private google doc).

I wouldn’t want to do this after the trip, e.g. with notes on what happened/what we learned/photos of us. After a trip, I’m done. I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I find the research-in-anticipation way more satisfying.