The Temporary European
“Vivid, funny, perceptive, intimate, and charged with a love of travel and a deep sense of humanity.” —Rick Steves, from the Foreword
20+ Years as Rick Steves’ Right-Hand Man
A candid account of how the sausage gets made in the travel business—told with affection, warts-and-all honesty, and a sense of humor.
What is it like to write guidebooks, make travel television, and lead bus tours for a living? Find out with Cameron as he samples spleen sandwiches at a Palermo street market, stews in Budapest’s thermal baths, survives driving in Sicily without going insane, and much more. Along the way, he shares many lessons learned from his favorite Europeans. You’ll also get a reality check for what seems to be a traveler’s dream job—working with Rick Steves and his merry band of travelers. Not just for Rick Steves fans but for anyone who loves Europe, The Temporary European is inspiring, insightful, and fun.
La Dolce Vita University – 2nd Edition
Come travel with La Dolce Vita University (L◆D◆V◆U) to the heart of Italian culture in the seductive spirit of la dolce vita. L◆D◆V◆U is the perfect sampler to indulge anyone curious about—or already in amore with—Italy and its remarkably rich trove of cultural treasures. In dozens of entertaining yet authoritative mini-essays, including 60 new stories and 40 new illustrations in this fully updated 2nd edition, L◆D◆V◆U lets you explore, at your leisure, fascinating aspects of Italy’s cuisine, history, art, traditions, style, legendary personalities, and so much more.
The book is organized alphabetically, but nothing is ever quite that straightforward when it comes to Italy. Even if you choose to read these mini-essays sequentially, you may very well feel as though you’re wandering the mysterious alleys of a medieval town, the hidden vicoli of a larger city, or even along the serpentine canals of La Serenissima.
The End of the World Notwithstanding
“Every word the right word, this book is a genuine keeper.” —Kirkus Reviews***Starred Review***
Rife with misadventure, brushes with death, and moments of existential insight, The End of the World Notwithstanding is a hilarious and reflective look at the emotional experiences that make everyday life exciting—and the physical ones that remind us we’re lucky to be alive. These nail-biting stories, all true, fill the reader with wonder, as in, “How do any of us survive?”
Encounters with wildfire, hideous insects, psychotic house pets, bad weather, gravity, predators, bullies, and the most potent force of all—fear—unfold in remote landscapes of the American West; on neon-splashed Hollywood sidewalks; in a Catskills summer camp for actors; in the Boston apartment of a famous senator; on a cliff high above the Mediterranean; beneath the streets of Paris. Goodwin looks for and finds meaning, if not security, in a clear-eyed acknowledgment of the human condition—and in the saving grace of laughter.
The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12
As Andrew McCarthy wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “For more than 20 years, Travelers’ Tales has been publishing books that might best be described as the literary equivalent of a group of travelers sitting around a dim café, sipping pints or prosecco and trading their best stories.”
Now comes The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12: True Stories from Around the World—the latest collection in the best-selling, award-winning series that invites you to ride shotgun alongside intrepid female nomads as they wander the globe discovering new places, faces, and facets of themselves.
“In story after story,” McCarthy wrote about the previous volume of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, “the refreshing absence of bluster and bravado, coupled with the optimism necessary for bold travel, create a unifying narrative that testifies to the personal value and cultural import of leaving the perceived safety of home and setting out into the wider world.”
The essays in this volume are as diverse as the destinations, exploring themes of kindness, transformation, nature, friendship, family, strength, and resilience.
French Like Moi
“I laughed until my sides hurt at Carpenter’s lighthearted and self-deprecating take on living in l’Hexagone.” —Kimberley Lovato, author of Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves
When Scott Carpenter moves from Minnesota to Paris, little does he suspect the dramas that await: scheming neighbors, police denunciations, surly demonstrators, cooking disasters, medical mishaps—not to mention all those lectures about cheese! It turns out that nothing in the City of Light can be taken for granted, where even trips to the grocery store lead to adventure.
Everything is grist for Carpenter’s mill. In eighteen tales, he lifts the curtain on what passes for normal in Europe’s most glorious capital: neighbors who plot to murder one another, hiccups in transportation, bizarre store exchange policies, operatic dramas in the condo association, healthcare à la française, underground labyrinths, and even terrorism. In the company of a cast of recurring characters, he leads us through the merry labyrinth of the everyday, one hilarious faux pas after another. Through it all, Carpenter, winner of Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize for humor, keeps his eye on the central mystery of what makes the French French (and Midwesterners Midwestern).
How To Shit Around the World — 2nd Edition
“Straightforward advice...a great bathroom read.” —The Washington Post
“A cheery and common-sensical guide.” —The Independent
“Worth digesting.” —Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel
“Likely to remain the definitive guide.” —The Bookseller
With an Introduction by Kathleen Meyer, author of How To Shit in the Woods
International travel is rewarding and fun, but sometimes it exacts a price. Activities we take for granted—eating, bathing, and going to the toilet—can range from challenging to risky in unfamiliar territory. In this second edition of How to Shit Around the World, Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth takes a sympathetic and funny approach to the most basic human activity, interweaving hilarious anecdotes from fellow travelers with sensible tips and techniques. More than just a how-to, this book inspires the traveler to be adventurous in dealing with foreign toilets, and to heed the fascinating cultural lessons to be learned from the simple act of using the bathroom.
The Girl Who Said No
She Broke a 1000-Year-Old Tradition
Eighteen-year-old Franca Viola made history in 1966 as one of the first “#metoo” heroines of modern times, when she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Having endured kidnap and rape, she publicly defied the expectation that she would marry the rapist to “restore her broken honor.” A social uproar occurred throughout the island—and beyond.
In Natalie Galli’s The Girl Who Said No, Viola’s remarkable story unfolds when the author arrives in Palermo to search for her, with little more than the memory of a tiny article she had spotted two decades prior. Galli wanted to know: whatever had become of this courageous girl who had overturned an ancient, entrenched tradition?
Throughout her search for the enigmatic Franca, Galli shares her own poignant and hilarious observations about a vibrant culture steeped in contradiction and paradox. Does she succeed in locating the elusive proto-feminist whose case forever changed Italian culture and history? Travel along on Galli’s engaging odyssey to find out.
“Engrossing from the very first page. I was totally swept away.” —Lavinia Spalding, author of Writing Away
Strange Tales of World Travel
“This book contains some of the most astonishing tales I’ve ever encountered. One after another. They make for obsessive reading.” —Tim Cahill, author of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh
“The entire point of travel is to encounter the unimaginable. Gina and Scott Gaille have collected some of the most remarkable tales to ever see the light of day. A hoot to read.” —J. Maarten Troost, author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen or experienced?
Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries. Wherever they go, they ask this question. Strange Tales of World Travel recounts 50 of these amazing encounters, including:
- Daring Diplomat, who ate the flesh of the venomous cobra bird in the Sahara Desert
- Pearl Trader, who survived a fever through a harrowing "human honey" treatment in Oman
- Agent Ghost, who was shot and left to die in a garbage dump in Africa
- Death-Defying Instagrammer, who stepped on the tail of the world’s sixth most venomous snake in Australia to take a better photo
- Human Pet, who became a prince’s prisoner in Qatar
- Imperial CEO, who made a minion fly twelve hours to Paris from Abu Dhabi to buy clean underwear
- Gorilla Doll, who broke the rules of visiting Rwandan gorillas and got dragged up the side of a volcano
The China Option
Sophia Erickson graduated from college with an apparently useless degree in European history. She faced crippling student loans, but after an anxious couple of months waiting tables in her small Massachusetts town, she bought a one-way ticket to China. Over the following two years she had deeply enriching cultural experiences, paid off nearly half her student loans, and visited China from Heilongjiang to Hainan, as well as neighboring countries Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Singapore. The China Option: A Guide for Millennials: How to work, play, and find success in China is a manifesto for recent college grads to pay off debt while living a stimulating, adventurous life, and to pave the way for a successful future.
100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go
The secret is out: Cuba is the world’s sexiest, most magnetic travel destination. What isn’t a secret is that folks from around the corner and around the globe have been exploring and falling in love with the largest Caribbean island for decades. Now you can too with 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go, written from the unique perspective of a New Yorker who has called Havana home for more than 15 years.
The 100 places profiled in this book are the result of decades of travel, research, and living in Cuba by a US journalist with uncommon access, ensuring travelers incomparable experiences. Much more than a prescriptive list, these narratives incorporate adventures and mishaps, insider opinion, slang, gossip, and conversations with Cubans during a historic shift that saw Soviet support evaporate, Fidel Castro take his final bow, economic reforms whiffing suspiciously of capitalism, and quasi-normalization with the United States.
Author Conner Gorry deciphers the mysteries of Cuba while describing the country’s most alluring sites, sounds, and off-the-beaten track locales. Go with her and discover this magical island for yourself.
Baboons for Lunch
Author and explorer James Michael Dorsey has spent two decades visiting the world’s most remote tribal cultures. In Baboons for Lunch and Other Sordid Adventures, he tells his remarkable travel stories in rollicking accounts that keep readers off balance and eager for more.
Many stories are funny, others are poignant, and quite a few are heart stopping, while others are unique insights into remote ways of life most of the world does not know exists.
In this book the reader will climb a remote volcano in Ethiopia, cross the Sahara Desert with nomads, undergo a tribal exorcism, and visit shamans, healers, witch doctors, and holy men.
This is not your average travel book, but an entree to some of the world’s remote corners and people.
The Soul of a Great Traveler
Since 2006 the editors of Travelers’ Tales have run a writing competition to find the best travel story of the year: The Solas Awards. Over those years, thousands of stories have come across their desks, from writers famous and unknown, covering all corners of the globe with stories of adventure and discovery, love and loss, humor and absurdity, grief and joy. In this collection appear all of the top prize winners of the first ten years, stories that bring readers along for journeys that are inspiring, uplifting, and, very often, transformative. These tales are powerful, moving testaments to the richness of our world, its cultures, people, and places.
The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11
The Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 11 presents stimulating, inspiring, and uplifting adventures from women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples, and facets of themselves. The common threads connecting these stories are a female perspective and fresh, compelling storytelling to make the reader laugh, weep, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn't.
The 31 true travel stories in this year's collection are, as always, wildly diverse in theme and location. They tell of places like California and Cuba, Switzerland and Singapore, Iran and Iceland, Montana and Mexico and Mongolia and Mali, our own back yards and some of the farthest, most extreme corners of the world. They are the personal stories we can't help but collect when we travel, stories of reaching out to embrace the unfamiliar and creating cross-cultural connections while learning more about ourselves.
Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls
Iranian president Akhmed teams up with the leaders of Venezuela and Cuba and their American intelligence agents to smuggle radioactive matzo balls into Miami Beach. But intelligence being as slippery a concept to these nincompoops as chicken fat on linoleum, when each member of the gang decides to ladle out his own personal nuke soup, holy terror Akhmed is left steaming. Will his plan to destroy America float like a fly or sink like a lead dumpling?
Star-crossed lovers, conniving academics, and blustery social climbers collide with ravenous termites, international do-badders, and multi-level marketing in a plot as fast-paced and hilarious as a runaway mountain bus. Radioactivity has never been so much fun.
Wake Up and Smell the Shit
STAND BACK!
The 31 tales in this raunchy round-the-world romp might get you dirty.
We've all had unspeakable experiences while traveling that we're ashamed to admit, but these often become our best stories in the re-telling. The writers in this collection cast inhibition aside and reveal their weirdest and worst moments and how they made the best of them. And memorable moments in exotic destinations come in all shapes and sizes: insects as big as Pam Anderson’s left tit, regrettable sex, stink-eyed officials, horrible healers, Lady Gaga’s shoes and Madonna’s special meal, trigger-happy militants, and peeping Tom rock stars.
A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean
A G
rump in Paradise discovers that anyplace it’s legal to carry a machete is comedy just waiting to happen
In A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, Gary Buslik roams from one topic to another, only a few of which have anything to do with travel. Whether depicting the foibles of human nature or dispensing pearls of wisdom on marriage, his stream-of-consciousness narrative takes us well beyond Montego Bay. And on those occasions when he waxes poetic about the natural beauty of the islands, his language is downright lyrical, a surprising counterpoint to the candid commentary and spicy observations sprinkled liberally throughout his book.
Mousejunkies! 3rd Edition
“Mousejunkies! is a laugh-filled alternative to your standard WDW travel book.”
—Jim Hill, Jim Hill Media
“Bill Burke is a master storyteller who can take the reader on a rewarding journey on everyday events.”
—Parenting Media Association
Where should you turn if you want the best inside information for your Walt Disney World vacation? Why, to the fanatics who go year after year, several times a year, who spend all their waking hours planning their next trip and devising strategies to make the most of their time there—for them it’s not a vacation, it’s a way of life. That’s right, you’d turn to the Mousejunkies!
Shopping for Buddhas: An Adventure in Nepal
25th Anniversary Edition!
“A wonderful travel companion for anyone who wants to view afresh the wonders and oddess of humankind.”
— Amy Tan
“Asia is a mythical jubilee,” writes Jeff Greenwald, “full of characters more strange and entertaining than anything you’ll find in Star Wars.” On his quest for the perfect Buddha statue, Greenwald treks to a lofty nunnery to meet “one of the most powerful women in Tibet—known to fly through the air.” He visits Kathmandu’s first indoor shopping mall (where a ride on the country’s first escalator is a near-religious event), and befriends a sly ...
Deer Hunting in Paris
Deer Hunting in Paris is an unexpectedly funny exploration of a vanishing way of life in a complex, cosmopolitan world. Sneezing madly from hay fever, a Korean-American preacher’s daughter refuses to get married, travels the world, and ends up learning how to hunt from her boyfriend’s conservative family. As she navigates the perils of an unlikely romantic relationship from Paris, France, to Paris, Maine, Paula Young Lee skewers human foibles while she celebrates hunting, DIY food culture, and what it means to be a carnivore.
She finds herself trying to keep from being “mistaken” for a deer and getting shot at the clothesline, while also avoiding becoming dinner for bears. Along the way, this former vegetarian finds lessons about life, love, and loss in a hacksaw and a haunch of venison.
Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana
Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana is the 9th book in the best-selling Travelers' Tales humor series, which began with There's No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled and blossomed into a classic "underwear" women's humor series, including Sand in My Bra and The Thong Also Rises. This laugh-out-loud collection will resonate with experienced travelers and novices alike and includes hilarious misadventures with packing, border crossings, travel fashion, language faux pas, weird food encounters, and romantic overtures abroad.
Kin to the Wind
“A most diverting and picaresque tale, one that reads like a sentimental journey of a hundred years ago.”
—the late Norman Cousins
In the early 1960s, a young, self-taught musician set out to travel the world with no money, equipped only with his guitar, his voice, and his belief in the goodness of people. Along the way, blown by the winds of fortune, guided by instinct, he played for kings and paupers, soldiers and servants, artists and terrorists. His name is Moro Buddy Bohn, and his unlikely and powerful story will uplift you and inspire you to live the life you want.
His audiences have included Queen Elizabeth II of England, King Frederick IX of Denmark, Pablo Picasso ...
Writing Away
“Lavinia Spalding has given travelers a witty, profound, and accessible exploration of the hows and whys of keeping a journal. Novices and veterans alike will find inspiration and fresh ideas on every page, along with practical suggestions to bring out the best writer in anyone…. Buy two copies—one to meditate on at home and another to dogear, underline and carry alongside your own journal en route.”
—Anthony Weller, author of The Siege of Salt Cove and Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road.
Two major trends have recently swept the travel world: the first, an overwhelming desire (thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love) to write one’s own memoir; the second, an explosion of social media, blogs, twitter and texts ...
Cruise Confidential: a hit below the waterline
“Part Love Boat, part Mutiny on the Bounty, Cruise Confidential does for cruising what Animal House did for higher education.” —J. Maarten Troost, author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals
Cruise Confidential is a delightfully funny, wild, and romantic adventure that reveals what it's really like working on a cruise ship. Brian David Bruns worked for a year in the ships' restaurants and his account will astonish you as you are assaulted with circumstances ranging from the absurd to the bizarre. Did you know that waiters are required to steal cutlery and even food from each other for their own guests? Can you imagine what the crew thinks of the passengers? And sex, don't forget the sex ...
More Sand in My Bra
We giggled all the way to the beach reading Jen Leo’s women’s travel/humor anthology Sand in My Bra, nearly laughed our britches off perusing Whose Panties Are These?, cracked up over The Thong Also Rises, and enjoyed even more hilarity when What Color is Your Jockstrap? transformed the “Leo trio” into a coed quartet. Fans feared that this fabulously funny “Empire of the Underwear” series might come to an end right then and there, but no way Jose!
Jen along with fellow travel writer and misadventure enthusiast, Julia Weiler, just couldn't resist all those requests to keep the comedy coming. So slip on your sarong, slap on some sin-block, and get ready for the funniest beach read this season with More Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write from the Road, Again!
Not So Funny When It Happened
"One funny-bone volume." —Chicago Tribune
Some of the best adventure stories come from misadventures-the pratfalls, faux pas, and vast embarrassments encountered on the road. These tales share those moments when the best of plans fall to the wayside-replaced by something unforeseen, and leavened by the saving grace of it all, a sense of humor. On this hilarious journey, you will:
What Color Is Your Jockstrap?
Encore to Jennifer Leo's bestselling travel humor books
Balls-Out Travel!
This time, it’s the battle of the sexes
You cackled at Sand in My Bra, sent Whose Panties Are These? to friends, thumbed past the bikini beauty on The Thong Also Rises to see what other Ms-Adventures were possible. We thought we’d stop before you cracked a rib, but you told us loud and clear that we couldn’t. We shouldn’t. No way, José. So, in the grand tradition of trilogies, there must be a fourth. But what else could we do? Jen Leo went on the hunt, and what she found...There’s No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled
Description
"Anyone who plans to travel should read this book. And then stay home." —Dave BarryCaught with your pants down? Don't worry you're not alone!
As everyone who's left their backyard knows, funny things happen when you hit the road in search of adventure. This collection of stories captures the wacky and bizarre adventures of great writers whose travels have not gone according to plan. But when things go wrong, their senses of humor come to the rescue.The Thong Also Rises
Description
Travel girls gone wild! It's not about their underwear, it's about gut-busting adventures. These funny women on the road just can't stop laughing about the global messes they get themselves into. In The Thong Also Rises, Jen Leo brings you dozens of crazy Ms.-Adventures from Egypt to South Dakota and back home again. On a coffee break, right before bed, waiting for the bus, or hiding in the bathroom—howl, cry, guffaw, and commiserate with these adventuresses.- Go to the bathroom with a pig in your face with Megan Lyles in India
- Congratulate the naked bride and groom on Valentine’s Day in Jamaica with Elizabeth Asdorian...
Whose Panties Are These?
Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures won thousands of fans with its outrageous tales of women’s travels. This new collection from the Mistress of Misadventure, award-winning editor Jennifer L. Leo, is loaded with more hilarious stories from women who have gone to the ends of the earth only to hear the sniggering of the cosmos. From an African village to the Great Wall of China, these stories that weren’t so funny when they happened will prove once again that travel, like laughter, is the best medicine.
- Discover the sex appeal of a big butt with Wendy Soref in Senegal
- Board “The Barf Boat” in Cape Verde with Karla Zimmerman
- Learn Lara Ephron’s secret for keeping perverts at bay on Japanese subways...
Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why
Have you ever had the feeling the world was laughing at you—or at least smirking—as you bumbled your way through a foreign land? Did time slow down, your face turn red, and sweat leap from every pore as you wished fervently you could just say, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Laugh at these authors in their shame and be glad that you were not there with them as they muddled their way through embarrassing situations and ghastly faux pas.
Sand In My Bra & Other Misadventures
Funny Women Have More Fun…
Travel isn’t always what we dream it will be, but oh…the stories we can tell later! For the 29 women in this book, packing a sense of humor was essential to the success of their trips. From Australia to Zambia, Thailand to Kuwait, the true stories in Sand in My Bra will not only have you shaking your head in disbelief, they’ll induce smiles, groans, cackles, and guffaws.
Last Trout in Venice
With an insatiable hunger for the absurd, Doug Lansky takes the reader on a global odyssey. Whether visiting the notoriously erotic Kit Kat Club in Berlin or bellhopping at an underwater hotel, Lansky takes on the world with pluck, irreverence, and a great sense of humor.
"Lansky brings indefatigable good cheer and a sense of wonder and curiousity to the task that is entirely inappropriate for a man of his age. Which is very good news for his fans!"
- Rudy Maxa, host, "The Savvy Traveler"
"Traveling with Doug Lansky might result in a considerably shortened life expectancy. . . but what a way to go."
- Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet Publications