This hefty volume reminds vacationers that hot tourist spots are small percentage of what's worth seeing out there. A quick sampling: Venice's Cipriani Hotel; California's Monterey Peninsula; the Lewis and Clark Trail in Oregon; the Great Wall of China; Robert Louis Stevenson's home in Western Samoa; and the Alhambra in Andalusia, Spain. Veteran travel guide writer Schultz divides the book geographically, presenting a little less than a page on each location. Each entry lists exactly where to find the spot (e.g. Moorea is located "12 miles/19 km northwest of Tahiti; 10 minutes by air, 1 hour by boat") and when to go (e.g., if you want to check out The Complete Fly Fisher hotel in Montana, "May and Sept.-Oct. offer productive angling in a solitary setting"). This is an excellent resource for the intrepid traveler.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
Around the World, continent by continent, here is the best the world has to offer: 1,000 places guaranteed to give travelers the shivers. Sacred ruins, grand hotels, wildlife preserves, hilltop villages, snack shacks, castles, festivals, reefs, restaurants, cathedrals, hidden islands, opera houses, museums, and more. Each entry tells exactly why it's essential to visit. Then come the nuts and bolts: addresses, websites, phone and fax numbers, best times to visit. Stop dreaming and get going.
About the Author
Patricia Schultz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and 1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die. A veteran travel journalist with 30 years of experience, she has written for guides such as Frommer’s and Berlitz and periodicals including The Wall Street Journal and Travel Weekly, where she is a contributing editor. She also executive-produced a Travel Channel television show based on 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Her home base is New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
The Story of This Book
Is it nature or nurture that sends a person out onto the Road—that whispers in one’s ear that it’s time to take off and make for the horizon, just to see what’s out there?
The urge to travel—to open our minds and move beyond the familiar—is as old as man himself. It’s what drove the ancient Romans to visit Athens’s Acropolis and Verona’s amphitheater. It’s what sent Marco Polo off on his momentous journey east, and what moved St. Augustine of Hippo to write, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page.” Whether we go to London for the weekend or to a place that’s utterly alien, travel changes us, sometimes superficially, sometimes profoundly. It is a classroom without walls.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you about my own wanderlust. Family legend (never proven) has it that we’re somehow related to Mark Twain, America’s great storyteller and also one of the preeminent globetrotters of his day. How then to explain my mother’s reaction when I had my own first Great Adventure?
It was the late 1950s, and Atlantic City was as exotic and unknown to me as Shangri-la—all sand and sea, hotels and boardwalk, and the intimation of greater things just beyond what I could see from the family beach blanket. I set off at the first opportunity, but after what seemed only a few precious minutes of intoxicating discovery (in fact several hours), I was snatched up by my apoplectic mother and a cadre of relieved lifeguards and brought back to the roost. This is my earliest memory: I had heard the siren call of the great, global beyond, and I had answered. I was hooked. I was four.
Fast-forward to college graduation. Campus buddies were heading straight for Wall Street apprenticeships, international banking programs, and family business obligations, but I made a beeline for the airport and my own private Grand Tour through the marvels of Italy and its neighbors. Could one make a living off la dolce vita? I was amazed when my first articles got published, but then I realized: one could. Many guidebooks and innumerable articles later, I found myself at a round table facing publisher Peter Workman and his right-hand editor, the late Sally Kovalchick, who told me about their desire to compile the world’s most enticing and intriguing treasures between two covers, and their belief that I was up to the challenge. I was on board.
When it came time to actually do it, though—to choose from the nearly bottomless grab bag of the world’s possibilities, both legendary and unsung—I realized I was in for a lengthy battle with philosophy and methodology and all the questions anyone who flips through this book is bound to ask. How did I arrive at these particular destinations and events?
