It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels
10 best books like It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels (Polly Evans): Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure, Spain, South from Granada: A Sojourn in Southern Spain, The Size of the World, A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco, Whose Panties Are These?: More Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road, Miles from Nowhere, Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars, The Best American Travel Writing 2006
Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons
| Author | Matthew Fort |
| ISBN | 0091910803 |
'Sicily struck me then as the most fascinating place I had ever visited. I didn't change that opinion over the intervening years, no matter where I travelled. I meant to go back. Time and again I made plans. Time and again I was thwarted.'
At the age of twenty-six Matthew Fort first visited the...
Malaria Dreams is a book about the author and his friend's trip from West Africa to the Mediterranean in a questionable car, and it's well written. So why the one star?
I like adventure travel and adventure travel books better than the next guy usually- depending on who the next guy actually is,...
| Author | Jan Morris |
| ISBN | 0140054634 |
This is a one-stop read on Spain. Probably no book this short can offer as much insight and you have Morris' writing style as well. Naturally, the country has an enormous history from its Iberian settlement through it phases of Phoenician and Greek development spurred on by Mediterranean trade. Then...
The First World War had a powerful effect on many of its participants; Gerald Brenan was one of those. Brenan came from an Anglo-Irish military family. He had the usual public school education, hated it and was bullied. He was expected to go into the army, but at 18 elected instead to walk to China with a...
By the time that travel writer Jeff Greenwald hit his late thirties, he had covered more ground than Magellan, Marco Polo, and Columbus combined. But he also came to a sobering conclusion: airplanes had reduced his exotic explorations to a series of long commutes. So he set out to rediscover the mass,...
| Author | Suzanna Clarke |
| ISBN | 0091925223 |
When Suzanna Clarke and her husband bought a dilapidated house in the Moroccan town of Fez, their friends thought they were mad. Located in a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, the house - a traditional riad - was beautiful but in desperate need of repair. Walls were in danger of collapse, the plumbing non-existent....
| Author | Jennifer L. Leo |
| ISBN | 1932361111 |
Following on the heels of the successful Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny Women Write from the Road comes another collection of hilarious travel stories by women. From America to Australia to everywhere in between, the true stories in Whose Panties are These? will have you shaking your...
| Author | Barbara Savage |
| ISBN | 0898861098 |
A well-loved, classic tale of adventure, a book you'll find yourself recommending again and again
This is the story of Barbara and Larry Savage's sometimes dangerous, often zany, but ultimately rewarding 23,000 miles global bicycle odyssey, which took them through 25 countries in two years....
| Author | Paul Fussell |
| ISBN | 0195030680 |
The kind of felicity to which the Blue Train conveyed you, as it let you off at Marseilles or Toulon or Cannes or Nice or Monte Carlo, whence you could go on to the Italian Riviera, to Rapallo and all the way down to the Amalfi Coast, seemed novel in the 20’s. It seems novel no longer because those places have...
| Author | Tim Cahill |
| ISBN | 0618582150 |
Tim Cahill writes in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2006, "'Story' is the essence of the travel essay. Stories are the way we organize the chaos in our lives, orchestrate voluminous factual material, and -- if we are very good -- shed some light on the human condition." Here are twenty-six...
The Best American Travel Writing 2005
The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty...
ARABIA is the story of Jonathan Raban's magic carpet ride through Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Yemen, Egypt and Jordan. Not only does it reveal the Arabs and their culture, it also introduces us to a series of memorable individuals.
Much of the book's strength is the author's gift for friendships....
| Author | Cees Nooteboom |
| ISBN | 0156011581 |
Roads to Santiago is an evocative travelogue through the sights, sounds, and smells of a little known Spain-its architecture, art, history, landscapes, villages, and people. And as much as it is the story of his travels, it is an elegant and detailed chronicle of Cees Nooteboom's thirty-five-year...
Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist
| Author | Cash Peters |
| ISBN | 0762727144 |
One of the funniest travel books ever written. British radio journalist makes his final journey around America, visitng the tackiest and kitchiest tours and theme parks, desperate to leave this part of his life behind before he becomes jaded.
Places visited include the Museum of Feet, the...
My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara
| Author | Jeroen van Bergeijk |
| ISBN | 0767928695 |
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”
—Janis Joplin
A journalist’s intrepid endeavor to sell his used car abroad results in a high-spirited and revealing look at West Africa.
“Look, there’s my car,” I say, pointing at my Mercedes in the parking lot.
“Where?”...
Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town
| Author | Michael Rips |
| ISBN | 0316748641 |
This book is a quick read, only 200 pages but full of amusing anecdotes and Italian eccentrics, an interesting mix of historical fact and myth, as well as the author's reflections on life in a small hilltop town called Sutri.
Sutri is in the Tuscia, where I live, so the book was of particular interest....
Snowball Oranges: One Mallorcan Winter
| Author | Peter Kerr |
| ISBN | 1786850427 |
When the Kerr family leave Scotland to grow oranges in a secluded valley on the island of Mallorca, they are surprised to be greeted by the same freezing weather they have left behind. Then they realize that their new orange farm is a bit of a lemon. . . . Laughter, finds Peter Kerr, is the best medicine when...
Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago
| Author | Tim Moore |
| ISBN | 0312320833 |
Having no knowledge of Spanish and even less about the care and feeding of donkeys, Tim Moore, Britain's indefatigable traveling Everyman, sets out on a pilgrimage to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela with a donkey named Shinto as his companion. Armed only with a twelfth-century handbook to...
Spanish Lessons: Beginning a New Life in Spain
| Author | Derek Lambert |
| ISBN | 0767904168 |
In the shrewd, comical spirit of Peter Mayle and Bill Bryson, Derek Lambert discovers the charms and idiosyncrasies of Spain as he experiences the rewards and frustrations of beginning a new life there. [set as a headline]
As Lambert and his wife set about restoring their moldering casita on Spain’s...
When Frank and Kevin first met in an empty Arab airport lounge on their way to India in January 1985, it was the beginning of a friendship which would take them together across the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent, ending up in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal.
'Kevin and I...
| Author | Lawrence Durrell |
| ISBN | 0670352969 |
As every reader of Durrell knows, his writing is steeped in the living experience of the Mediterranean, and especially the islands of Greece. This captivating and highly unusual text, originally conceived as a picture book and now reset in paperback format, weaves together evocative descriptions,...
The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek
| Author | Barry W. Cunliffe |
| ISBN | 0142002542 |
Around 330 b.c., a remarkable adventurer named Pytheas set out from the Greek colony of Massalia (now Marseille) on the Mediterranean Sea to explore the fabled, terrifying lands of northern Europe. Renowned archaeologist Barry Cunliffe here re-creates Pytheas's unprecedented journey, which...
Sleeping Around: A Couch Surfing Tour Of The Globe
| Author | Brian Thacker |
| ISBN | 1741752108 |
Ein sehr amüsantes Buch, und für mich, als Reiseliteraturfan aller Art, sehr kurzweilig zu lesen. Von einigen nicht so wohlwollenden Rezensionen, die bemängelten, dass es in diesen Geschichten hauptsächlich ums Saufen geht, muss ich zwar zustimmen. Aber Brian Thacker schafft es, mit seiner...
It's All Greek to Me!: A Tale of a Mad Dog and an Englishman, Ruins, Retsina--and Real Greeks
| Author | John Mole |
| ISBN | 1857883438 |
After falling in love with an incredible view John Mole found himself owning a pile of stones and 20 years of goat dung. With no water, electricity or even a road his family were unamused. This is the warm and funny story of the Mole family's dream of making a home in a whitewashed island house with a blue door...
