Dorling Kindersley £12.99 and £25

Dorling Kindersley has just bought out a deluxe gift edition of its guide to Sydney, which as well as having a fourth revised version of the book itself, includes a fold-out city map and four credit-card sized laminated cards of handy information. But what is particularly useful is a leather case that takes the book and has enough space for other travel documents.

This is a nifty piece of kit as it means that you don't walk around looking like a complete tourist. You can pass it off as a regular bag. It came in useful recently on a trip to Istanbul as did DK's Eyewitness Travel Guide to the city, last revised two years ago.

Argument still rages about whether the all-singing DK guides are too smart for their own good - their claim is that they show what others only tell you. But if you are short of time and want to know what is what and where it is and what time it is open then they are unbeatable. The pictures help you identify things - and if you have never been somewhere before this is extremely useful.

The guide helped choose a good restaurant by price and location (Pandeli's which is up some stairs in the Spice Bazaar) and identified its specialities (swordfish on a skewer). It gave adequate explanations of the big four tourist attractions that have to be seen - the Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia, the Grand Bazaar and the Topkapi Palace - identified a top Turkish bath (Cagaloglu), and the maps worked.

The pictures help, too, when you get home, because the DK series is one that you can dip into for a bit of holiday nostalgia.

So for a day or two away in a major city it was fine. It is aimed at the middle-aged traveller. What it did not do was give any idea of any alternative Istanbul or details of much night-life. It is not aimed at backpackers.