Why Not the Best?

By Michael Walsh

They practically tumble off the shelves in an avalanche of stars and toques, bursting open with emphatic recommendations and indignant dismissals in unprecedented profusion; if they could talk, there would be an argument. The best hotel in Paris? The finest painting in the Prado? The tastiest little trattoria in Trastevere? Guidebooks, those quirky, opinionated and impassioned travelers' aids tout the virtues of everything from a stroll down the Strand to a tour of the catacombs. A sampling of the more comprehensive:

Europe 1983 edited by Stephen Birnbaum; Houghton Mifflin; $13.95. This is the pick of the single-volume books, a guide to the bests: ski areas, tennis clubs, museums, music festivals, language schools, even flea markets. Birnbaum provides detailed sightseeing itineraries as well as separate entries on 34 major cities. Written in a brisk, chummy style, Europe 1983 is like a long chat with a peripatetic friend whose tastes you share.

Europe 1983-84 edited by Robert C. Fisher; Fisher Travel Guides; $14.95. Begun last year by the former editor in chief of the Fodor's Modern Guides, the 16-volume Fisher guides are aimed at travelers who like other people to make their decisions for them. Everything--hotels, restaurants, sights, museums and points of interest--gets from zero to five stars, which saves those who are in a rush to hit the beach the necessity of having to read the breezy text or the cute but helpful marginal annotations. Although the Fisher European tour whirls through 18 countries, it is often finely detailed, right down to the best restaurant in Delphi (Grigoris) and the best attraction in Oslo (Vigeland Sculptures, Frogner Park).

Fodor's Europe 1983 Fodor's Modern Guides; $12.95 This classic series, founded by Eugene Fodor in 1936, is sober and serious, at times more British Victorian in outlook than modern American. (Describing Europeans in his introduction, British Writer John Ardagh intones: "What does Europe really have in common, beyond geography?... Above all, we comprise the great Caucasian family of white peoples ...") Fodor's is especially trustworthy on hotels and restaurants. A knowledgeable, well-organized, basically middle-class peregrination through 33 European countries, colonies and principalities that leaves no worthy stones unturned, even if they are in Albania, Gibraltar or Liechtenstein.

Fielding's Europe 1983 Fielding; $12.95. This is the 36th annual edition of the late Temple Fielding's gentlemanly survey of Europe's palaces, fleshpots and spas. Oldfashioned, with an unabashed dollop of modest sexism (the text refers to Fielding's wife as "my Nancy"), it is written in a style once aptly described as "Rotarian baroque" and infused with a crusader's zeal. Occasionally, there is a pawky sense of humor at work: of Claridge's hotel in London, Fielding observes, "Finding space will be the problem, since it is inhabited by client legacies that go back to the time of the Picts." Designed for a vanishing clientele--the affluent, ignorant American--Fielding's could stand revision in tone, if not in substance, to remain competitive.

Europe on $20 a Day by Arthur Frommer; Frommer/Pasmantier; $9.95. It started out as $5 a day, but times and the inflation rate have changed. Frommer, however, has not. Still the popular Baedeker of Bermuda-shorts wearers everywhere, Europe on $20 approaches the Continent as a kind of Disneyland for post-adolescents, and brims with a wide-eyed sense of wonder. But after one too many meals in department-store cafeterias, one too many Dickensian bed-and-breakfasts and one too many afternoons of hauling dirty laundry around Zurich in a vain search for the cheap laundromats that Frommer assures us "abound" (they do not), even the most economical tourist may sneak a look at what Birnbaum has to say.

Let's Go: The Budget Guide to Europe 1983 St. Martin's Press; $8.95. Tunisia, Morocco, Greece, Egypt, Israel: these contemporary meccas of American students are each thoroughly covered, along with a frugal European grand tour, in this guide issued annually by the Harvard Student Agencies, Inc. Even more rockbottom, pricewise, than Frommer's guide, Let's Go offers tips on youth hostels, hitchhiking, overseas study and controlled substances ("The best advice is to stay away from drugs in Europe"), as well as sensible sightseeing suggestions.

Amid the welter of guides to individual countries, American Express stands out with a new series of eight pocket guides (Simon & Schuster; $7.95 each), detailed, small-print tours of cities and regions. The excellent volume on Rome includes history, sights, even ice cream shops. These minis are handy, although the profusion of tiny symbols can be confusing. Berlitz, in addition to its well-thumbed series of phrase books publishes city guides ($4.95) to sightseeing and activities, but do not look here for hotel or restaurant recommendations.

By far the wittiest, if not the surest, books are the Gault/Millau guides (Crown; $11.95 each) to Paris, London, New York and France. The work of two dedicated French cuisinartistes, to whom a badly cooked meal is a personal, nay national, affront, Henri Gault and Christian Millau's assessments of hotels and restaurants are unfortunately often more informed with high passion than sound taste. More reliable is the august Guide Michelin, long the three-starred supreme arbiter of hotels, restaurants and touring, not so much written as compiled as if by God himself.

--By Michael Walsh This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.