One of the books displayed on our Amazon carousel now is 101 Places Not To See. It's a different sort of travel guide recently published by Harper Collins. Its author, Catherine Price, has put together an eclectic collection of places that she, and several guest contributors, recommend that we don't bother visiting.
You might be saying, "But the world is out there to be explored: good, bad, and ugly." And I admit we were somewhat skeptical at first.. .but then came the chuckles and that led to laughing right out loud. After all, how can one read a book that includes "The Testicle Festival" (held each year at the Rock Creek Lodge outside Missoula, Montana) or "The Amsterdam Sex Museum" and not laugh?
I disagree with many of Price's slam-dunks on places; for instance, she seems to have written off the whole state of Nevada -- a place where we recently completed one of the best road trips imaginable; or the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico (so. . .it's not for the squeamish, but we thought it was interesting). Several items such as the smell of the (San Francisco Bay Area) BART rapid transit train carpet or 'an AAA meeting when you are drunk' seem almost to be 'fillers' and detracted from excellent tales such as the night spent at a Korean temple (that one had me laughing out loud).
However, she's included a good number of places -- such as The Gum Wall tucked away in an alley near Pike Place Market right here in Seattle -- that I'd never heard of before.
Each place gets no more than 2- 3 pages in the book making it a great over-all quick read. It might be the perfect gift for some travel-fanatic friend of yours who always is looking for some new off-beat destination; she certainly has plenty of them!
Note: The publisher provided us a copy of the book to review; however, there were no commitments made to review the book on the blog. We've read the book and enjoyed it, particularly the author's statement concerning why she wrote it: she was tired of those books telling her all the things she needed to do before she dies and felt it time to let people know those things they could remove from their to do lists.
It got us thinking, "Where would we have included in the book?" What place would you have included? Add a comment below:
Nice review, Jackie.
ReplyDeleteShe left out Port Orchard's World Famous Baked Potato Rock. Perhaps she considers that a must-see.
ReplyDelete