100 Greatest Trips, by Travel & Leisure

Those who know me personally know that I deeply love to travel. One would think that a book showcasing 100 great trips by a publisher that also expresses a love of travel would find many areas of overlap in our interests when it comes to visiting other places. There are, though, different kinds of travelers, and this particular book is striking evidence of there being a massive difference between the mindset of the people involved in Travel & Leisure and my own, to the extent that not only was I disappointed by the sorts of travels expressed here, for the most part, but was actively repelled by most of the discussion of what to do on vacation and what kind of places to enjoy. The authors of this book and I are not fellow travelers enjoying the beauties of creation or the wonders of history and culture, but have diametrically opposed views of how one is to vacation and how one is to conduct oneself while traveling, to the extent where this book is perhaps the worst ever travel book that I have read, and one that makes me very unlikely to ever pick up another volume from the publisher to read ever again without knowing that it has changed its philosophy and approach.

How could it come to this? There are several sorts of vacations that are recommended in this book. Some of them involve trips to politically leftist places with an enjoyment of the “vibe” of these places in areas like New York City, Portland, and elsewhere. These trips were not of particular interest to me as a reader, since I find leftist cities actively repellant. The book also contains quite a few ideas for road trips where one engages in the eating of a lot of unclean foods–strikingly nearly all of the book’s recommendations for food are something related to pork or unclean seafood, which makes even these recommendations rather worthless. The book also does a lot of recommendations for vacations that involve extreme levels of physical fitness, which for various reasons relating to my lack of mobility are also less than helpful, even if some of them are the sorts of things I would want to enjoy, honestly. There are only a few vacations–perhaps most notably the visit to Antarctica to see penguins–which I could wholeheartedly enjoy, and even most of these vacations that I would find appealing are highly expensive, which indicates that this book is designed for the well-heeled and left-leaning traveler who enjoys either seeing places that are beyond the interest of common people or beyond their budget, with a high amount of value in ungodly epicurean pleasures (including large amounts of drinking). These are not my people.

In terms of its contents, this book contains the recommendations for 100 trips divided regionally in a bit less than 300 pages. After an introduction, the first part of the book focuses on United States and Canada, with trips recommended for Rhode Island, Brooklyn (New York City), the Hamptons, Washington DC, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Chattanooga, the Atlantic coast of Florida, Florence Alabama, Oxford Mississippi, New Orleans, Bentonville Arkansas, Texas, Mason City Iowa, Colorado, Palm Springs, Malibu, and Eastern Sierra California, Seattle, the Willamette Valley wineries in Oregon, Oahu, Toronto, and various Canadian islands. This is followed by a section on the Caribbean that recommends an expensive but interesting-looking Caribbean cruise, Vieques Puerto Rico, St. John (a lovely island), Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, Caribbean hotels on Anguilla, Antigua, Dominica, St. Bart’s, St. Lucia, and St. Martin, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The next section focuses on Latin America, with trips to Mineral de Pozos, Mexico City, and Costa Careyes Mexico, Punta Gorda Belize, Panama City, Osa Costa Rica, Manchu Picchu Peru, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Salta, Buenos Aires, and Patagonia in Argentina. Europe comes in next with vacations promoted for England (including London in particular), Madrid Spain, Dao Portugal, Paris France, Milan, Maremma, Naples, and Trieste Italy, Berlin, Almere Netherlands, Copenhagen, Brussels, a European road trip, the Mediterranean as a whole, Istanbul and the Aegean coast of Turkey, and Moscow. A short section on Africa and the Middle East discusses visits to Johannesburg in South Africa, safaris in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, and Uganda, Zanzibar (Tanzania), Mozambique, Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi. A slightly longer section on Asia recommends vacations to Yakushima and Tokyo in Japan, Seoul South Korea, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Xishuangbanna in China, Sri Lanka, Goa in India, Koh Samui and Bangkok in Thailand, Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh City and Ninh Binh in Vietnam, Singapore, and the Panglao Islands of the Philippines. The final section of the book then recommends trips to Tasmania, Melbourne, Lord Howe Island, and various Australian beaches in Australia, Marlborough New Zealand, and penguin viewing in Antarctica. The book ends with a trips directory, index, contributors, and photographs.