100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go is a lively and highly subjective collection of places that will educate, illuminate, entertain, challenge, or otherwise appeal to women of all kinds. From historic (such as the Women's Rights National Historic Park) to kitschy (SPAM museum), these places and activities provide a wide-angle view of all that makes America, America.
Told in a series of stylish, original essays, New York Times travel bestseller 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go is for the serious Francophile and anyone who loves crisp stories well told. Like all great travel writing, this collection goes beyond the guidebook and offers insight not only about where to go but why to go there. Combining advice, memoir, and meditations on the glories of traveling through France, this book is the must-have for anyone—woman or man—voyaging to or just dreaming of France. Award-winning writer Marcia DeSanctis draws on years of travels and life in France to lead you through vineyards, architectural treasures, fabled gardens, and contemplative hikes from Biarritz to Deauville, Antibes to the French Alps. These 100 entries capture art, history, food, fresh air, beaches, wine, and style and along the way, she tells the stories of many fascinating women who changed the country’s destiny. Ride a white horse in the Camargue, seek iconic paintings of women in Paris, try thalassotherapy in St. Malo, shop for raspberries at Nice’s Cour Saleya market—these and 96 other pleasures are rendered with singular style. The stories are sexy, literary, spiritual, profound, and overall, simply gorgeous. 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go is an indispensable companion for the smart and curious love of France.
Patricia Harris began visiting Spain shortly after the death of dictator Francisco Franco and has witnessed the country's renaissance in art, culture, and cuisine as it rejoined Europe. Drawing on three decades of intimate acquaintance with the country, she leads readers along twisting mountain roads, down to the docks of fishing villages, into the shoe outlets of Elche, and out to the muddy saffron fields of La Mancha. She takes you down city streets of Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, and San Sebastian to dark flamenco clubs, sybaritic public baths, endlessly inventive tapas bars, design shops full of mantillas and fans, and into a brightly tiled chocolatería for hot chocolate and churros at 3 a.m. She explores the art from Velázquez to Picasso, architecture from the phantasmagorical vision of Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Familia to the cool suspension spans of Santiago Calatrava. She tells the tales of some formidable Spanish women, from a fourth-century B.C. goddess to a queen who wrested Spain from the Moors, to the twenty-first-century winemakers who elevated Spain's Toro and Rueda onto the world stage. Literary, sexy, whimsical, and even spiritual, 100 Places in Spain Every Woman Should Go is for the smart and curious traveler who wants to see Spain, her way.
With its breezy reviews and insightful advice, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go encourages women of any age to see the world — in a group, with a friend, or solo — and inspires them to create their own list of dreams. Based on her own explorations of many countries, states, and regions, and on interviews with travelers, award-winning author Stephanie Elizondo Griest highlights 100 special destinations and challenging activities — from diving for pearls in Bahrain to racing a camel, yak, or pony across Mongolia; to dancing with voodoo priestesses in Benin and urban cowboys in Texas; to taking a mud bath in a volcano off the coast of Colombia. Divided into such sections as “Places Where Women Made History,” “Places of Indulgence,” and “Places of Adventure,” this guidebook includes timely contact information, resources, and recommended reading. “Ten Tips For Wandering Women” features safety precautions plus pointers on haggling, packing, and staying parasite-free. Vivid portraits of free spirits like Frida Kahlo (“A tequila-slamming, dirty joke-telling smoker, this famous artist was bisexual and beautiful”) help travelers expand their experience.
“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award “DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” —The Washington Post Vogue's Best Books of 2022 The Washington Post’s Best Travel Books of 2022 Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home. Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.
The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11 is the latest in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing — from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisines and cultures. Includes winners from the annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. Introduction by Rolf Potts In The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11, readers will: Piece together the puzzle of life in rural Cambodia Reawaken the joy of travel on a bus ride through Mexico Reexamine war memories with former soldiers in Vietnam Learn the ropes and the art of sailing with a "good captain" on the Pacific Find a true soul sister in the highlands of Ecuador Follow Vincent van Gogh's footsteps in France Survive (or not) a home invasion in Brazil...and much more
Since publishing the original edition of A Woman’s World in 1995, Travelers’ Tales has been the recognized national leader in women’s travel literature, and with the launch of the annual series The Best Travel Writing in 2004, the obvious next step was an annual collection of the best women’s travel writing of the year. This title is the tenth in that series—The Best Women’s Travel Writing—presenting 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 points of view and perspectives are global, and themes are as eclectic as in all of our books, including stories that encompass spiritual growth, hilarity and misadventure, high adventure, romance, solo journeys, stories of service to humanity, family travel, and encounters with exotic cuisine.
For ten years 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 last 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. In this book, readers will: Deposit a loved one's ashes in a Bolivian River Find the Celtic soul you never knew you had in rural Ireland Grope through the maze of sorcery and madness in Cameroon Rediscover your sense of self on a return to Russia after many years away Follow the spirit of John Wesley Powell down the Grand Canyon in Arizona Engage loss and the specter of death in Mexico Face your deepest fears alone in an Alaskan winter Encounter the realities of prostitution in Thailand Absorb the rhythms and soul of Flamenco in Spain Fall in love with a home in rural France and make it your own... and much more
“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen or experienced?” Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, including many off-the-beaten-path places in Africa, South America, and Asia. Wherever they go, they ask this question. Everyone has a story, and some are truly extraordinary. Strange Tales of World Travel recounts 50 of these Bizarre, Mysterious, Horrible, Hilarious 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 Strange Tales of World Travel presents unforgettable stories that celebrate the unique character of countries around the globe—and the distinctive characters that make travel endlessly intriguing and exhilarating.
An eighteen-year-old woman named 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 this brave heroine, 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? The riveting events after Franca pressed charges with the police form the core of this gripping memoir. Viola was subjected to public taunting whenever she appeared on the streets of her town; Mafia-orchestrated bullying threatened her entire family. Galli traced the dramatic tale to its conclusion, in spite of initial warnings from her own relatives not to break the Sicilian code of silence. Throughout her search for the enigmatic Franca, Galli shares her own poignant and hilarious observations about a vibrant culture steeped in contradictions and paradoxes. 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.
