If you’re not a big fan of Doctor Who, then it’s the kind of book you read skipping a few paragraphs here and then, when Griffiths goes into detail about the episode happenings that occurred at the newest place he’s traveled to. There is still plenty of interest as the quirky choices for filming sites (remembering that this includes alien planets!) lead Griffiths to many parts of Britain that the average tourist wouldn’t see.

In a neat twist, Who Goes There is accompanied by a website which includes Google map links to the locations described in the book plus information that’s valuable for pretty much any tourist - tips on the best ol’ English pubs nearby. Griffiths’ writing style is conversational and informative and will give you a few intriguing ideas for your next travels in Britain; and if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ll just be drooling with nostalgia.

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Chasing Doctor Who in Britain

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There are five main principles that the entire idea is based on: following your intuition, being spontaneous, traveling off the beaten track, integrating your trip into your life journey, and being prepared for “mystical experiences”. Without a doubt, the first three of these will lead you to more interesting travel experiences, and the concrete advice gets down to things like finding locally-owned hotels rather than staying in international chains and eating the cuisine native to the country you’re traveling in rather than going to a fast food chain - all very sound advice.

The book is quite an odd combination of the spiritual and the practical, and also covers topics like safety and security, working abroad and timing your visit to coincide with mainstream festivals. For those who are immediately attracted to such a book, it’s really a treasure trove; and for others who might be more skeptical, there’s actually a wealth of useful information and tips inside.

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Make Your Travel Life-Changing By Traveling Magically

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Bell is a cricket lover, but you don’t have to be to enjoy this book. But it’s important that he loves the sport and wants to spread the joy of it throughout Eastern Europe. From Estonia to Hungary and Slovakia to Slovenia, Bell travels all around the countries that have recently started joining the European Union, and he manages to meet the cricket teams, large and small, who play in these nations.

Batting on the Bosphorus says something about cricket, but a lot more about the constantly changing region of Eastern Europe. It’s a fascinating time to travel in these countries as they modernize and find new personalities in the post-Socialist era and by getting in touch with the locals - even if they are mostly cricketers - Bell is able to learn a lot about what makes these places tick. But above all, it’s a book that provides a good laugh.

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Angus Bell Bats on the Bosphorus - An Eastern Europe Tour

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Along with his friend Iggy, Greg Melville decides to take his converted 1985 Merecedes station wagon from coast to coast on a trip to prove that you can drive all that way without visiting a gas station. Pretty soon it also turns into a bit of an environmental odyssey with visits to wind farms, a Wal-Mart which has turned a bit environmentally friendly, and even a trip to Al Gore’s mansion which Melville derides as being green but obnoxiously large and therefore, not that green.

Melville’s style is chatty and amusing, and it’s a trip every reader wants them to succeed on. As you’d expect there are a few hairy moments with unreliable mechanics in this thirty-plus year old car, and the difficulties of finding the right kind of used oil to pump into their tank. But - not to spoil the ending - they make it, and the resulting book is funny as well as educational, which I think is a good combination when it comes to green travel.

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A Greasy and Green Ride Across the US

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The book is structured by “walks” - six of them, in fact, starting back in the 1970s and covering different areas of the Palestine hills under ever differing circumstances. What struck me was the beauty of the area, which is very well described, and something that an outside is usually not privvy to. The different companions that Shehadeh takes on his walks, along with the varying conversations and incidents that ensue, tell both a travel tale and a political one.

Palestinian Walks was the winner of the Orwell Prize in 2008 and has received much critical acclaim around the world. Anyone interested in this conflict-drowned area might like to read other works by Shehadeh, who has also written about life in Ramallah under siege and occupied Palestine in general.

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Walking in the Palestinian Hills

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Although the marketing wants us to think that career breaks are for any age group, the book’s image looks clearly aimed at late teenager and twenty-something travelers who don’t have much experience traveling independently or abroad. But there’s definitely information inside that could be helpful for anyone planning some extended travel.

Main sections include tips for planning, ideas for earning cash along the way, choosing your destinations with hints on good round-the-world routes, and more detailed information on the rules and regulations for English-speaking travelers (from the United States, Britain or Australia) who apparently are the biggest segment of this market. As you might have come to expect from Lonely Planet there is also a section of lists including a “20 Big Trip Travel Experiences” list of the best 20 destinations around the world. Not sure about the top 20 list, but the rest of the information is pretty solid and handy for first-time travelers.

photo credit: Mr.mt

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Hints on Taking the First Big Trip

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There are also three important “top ten” lists: the best cities, the top regions and of course, the top ten countries to travel to, according to the Lonely Planet team. As often in these kinds of Lonely Planet lists, they contain a few old favorites and a bunch of “new” destinations that are either on the way to become trendy or probably will be as a result of this book. Whether that’s a good thing or not and you actually want to be the kind of traveler who follows these trends is a matter that’s up to individuals, of course.

A nice feature of the book is that it ends with country profiles for every nation in the world. By necessity, they are quite brief, but they give you a good overview of what’s happening around the place these days, and is especially good for sorting out in your mind the corners of the world which are a bit unfamiliar. As a whole, the book is a nice resource for daydreaming about possible trips but not much use for planning one - but daydreaming is a necessary part of the travel equation, anyway.

photo credit: Ferdinand Reus

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Lonely Planet Tips for Best Travel in 2009 Review

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“The Rustico” is the main character in this book: a cottage that overlooks the Spoleto Valley in Umbria. Michael Tucker and his wife Jill fell in love with Umbria while on vacation in Italy, largely because an accommodation booking in Tuscany didn’t meet their expectations. They certainly didn’t set out to buy “The Rustico” but it turned out to be irresistible.

With some additions and renovations to be made the house, nothing goes exactly smoothly - it is Italy, after all - but the story is a great way to help us know the country better. It’s also very educational for anyone considering investing in the chaos that is Italian real estate.

There’s also plenty of food in this travel memoir, with plates of home-cooked Italian delicacies (and the accompanying wine) wafting over many of the pages. You can also learn not to order a cappuccino after ten o’clock in the morning - it’s a breakfast drink. Who knew? photo credit: mozzercork

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Live and Eat in Italy with Michael Tucker

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You might have thought that the secret life of a natural history museum is what you see in the Ben Stiller movie Night at the Museum, but science writer Richard Fortey tells the real truth in his book Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. Fortey worked at London’s Natural History Museum as a palaeontologist for over thirty years so certainly has some inside gossip.

For museum-loving tourists, there’s probably no better book to read before the trip than a behind the scenes account of museum life. Fortey takes us inside parts of the museum the public doesn’t usually see (which in this case, apparently, is more than half of the collection). He writes of exploring the hidden corridors of the museum with the excitement of a schoolboy - the only problem is that this makes us as readers want to follow him and we can’t!

Fortey almost became famous, he reports, for burning down the Smithsonian Institution with his smouldering pipe embers in 1976. Luckily security guards noticed the fire. These kind of anecdotes are littered throughout the book and the end effect is that you’ll see the next museum you enter in a different way.

This book could have got too technical or scientific, but Fortey manages to combine information with storyetlling and most of the time keeps it interesting. It turns out to be a treasure suitable for travelers and scientists alike and it’d be great if every museum could offer this kind of inside story to its visitors.

photo credit: ben.snider

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Getting Inside London’s Natural History Museum - Travel Book Review

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Since Carey had lived in Sydney before, he had a ready network of friends to tap into when he once again set foot on the Aussie shore. Before arriving he had decided he wanted to tell the story of this month-long trip through anecdotes related to the elements of water, earth, wind and fire, and he spends the book pursuing the various friends who he knows have interesting tales to tell.

Through this framework, the reader really gets to know Sydney, its culture and its history, getting much deeper than the average tourist. Carey goes into detail about the design of the famous Sydney Opera House through hearing a presentation from a little-known academic; he describes the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race through the terrifying tales of friends who took part in its most dangerous year. He looks back into history to when white people first arrived in Sydney and lets us see how it has changed since then, for better or for worse, and he brings us up to the present day by looking at the influence of the 2000 Olympic Games on the city, too.

30 Days in Sydney won’t tell you when the ferry to Manly leaves Circular Quay, but it is still a must-read for anyone visiting Sydney.

photo credit: krossbow

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Understanding the Real Sydney

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