Evidently, travel writer’s job is never done.  It never fails; as soon as we finish the annual updates to our travel books, something gets changed in the world. (It seems this world never stops changing– especially in the Big Apple!)  But busy bees that we are here at Clued In Travel Books, we are on it.  Even so, we must admit that it can be disheartening.  Examples?  Okay…

When arriving with friends the other night at New Topaz Thai (which is one of our feasting recommendations in Clued In New York) our hearts sank when we saw that the restaurant had installed a new yellow awning over their doorway, with A CHANGE IN THEIR NAME!  Granted, it wasn’t a huge change but accuracy in our books is so important to us that it was difficult to bear.  What restaurant changes its name? Sheesh.  After our sublime meal -with some of the tastiest curry we’ve ever had anywhere- we rushed home to update the raw manuscript and to email Jason, our ebook formatter to make the change from New Topaz Thai to Topaz Thai Authentic.  This change will be reflected in Clued In New York books purchased after January 31st, 2018.  In addition, Topaz has now rented the space next door and is serving different dishes there under the name Topaz Noodle Bar.  It looks adorable and will be reviewed at our New York-specific blog page soon.

Our next frustration came when casually reading a recent article about New York’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art (our #1 sight recommendation in Clued In New York.) It stated that after forty-plus years of allowing visitors to “pay what they want” for admission, they would soon be charging a mandatory fixed amount of $25 (except for folks with proof of local residency in NY.)  WHAT?!  Our hearts sank again.  Nevermind that the Met Museum was one of our top sight because it was a donation-based entry; nevermind that we committed about two and a half pages on the reasons why they were donation-based, and why visitors should not feel bad paying less than the suggested amount.  Did the Met Museum even think to speak with us first before making such a huge, historic change in their admission policy? Clearly not. Anyway, the one good thing is that visitors paying the full price will have a ticket that is good for entry for three days in a row.

And so once again we have to bother dear Jason and ask for a revision.  It never ends! But we are happy to have our blog site where, at the very least, we can announce any changes to info in our travel books quickly and efficiently, especially between our major annual updates.  If you own one of our books and are going on a trip soon, don’t forget to check the city-specific page – clickable on the top menu bar of cluedintravebooks.com –  so that you will be perfectly clued in on your trip!

Safe and happy travels!  ~Dean and Andie

A slight name change for Topaz Thai but the delicious cuisine is the same

It’s that holiday time again, and all of the great cities featured in our Clued In travel ebooks are in full celebration (and decoration) mode.  If you are planning a visit to Venice or Rome, Paris or London, New York, San Francisco, or even Miami Beach– we’ve got you covered.  The most frequent feedback from our traveler-readers? They find info in our books that they haven’t seen anywhere else!  Makes us very proud…

Check out each individual “city blog” from the menu above where we will be posting holiday greetings from each place.  And from our entire team, have a very merry Christmas and a New Year full of travel! 

The Nutcracker ballet at London’s Royal Opera House

All of us here at Clued In Travel Books would like to wish you and yours a very joyous, safe, and fun Thanksgiving holiday.  BTW, our author Andie Easton is a direct descendant of five of the pilgrims on the Mayflower!

Hey, it’s great to see you here!  If this is your first visit to the Clued In Travel Books blog, click that welcome link on the green banner above. Our amazon.com links can be found on that same page too.

How to get around:   Aside from this general blog, we maintain city-specific blogs here too, and share special tips and recommendations for each and every one of our Clued In travel locations. You can visit these colorful webpages by clicking on the city names above. They contain our favorite photos too, and are a helpful addition to our current published travel guides.

This gorgeous photo of Rome’s Pantheon in the moonlight is by our photographer Richard Soto

All of our fabulous Clued In travel books for 2018 are now up and running on Amazon. These new editions are better than ever, so if you own any previous versions of our city-guides, take a moment to call the folks at Kindle ebooks at (866) 321-8851. They truly want you to have the latest versions of our books and will shoot the new versions out to you instantly for free. Happy traveling!

Collect all of our concise and opinionated travel books:
*Clued In Venice
*Clued In Rome
*Clued In Paris
*Clued In London
*Clued In New York
*Clued In Miami
*Clued In San Francisco

Announcing, Clued In San Francisco, the newest guide in our series! It’s debuting now on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNobel.com .  We are very proud of it and our team had great fun creating it. (Perhaps because we included a new section on cocktail lounges!)  So for a couple of bucks you can know everything we know about the city by the bay (which is a lot) along with great color pics as well. Check it out and let us know what you think.

All the best, Dean & Andie.