Culture Trails
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews the book Culture Trails
by Lonely Planet, which has a section on Vintage Hollywood alongside 51 other
perfect weekends for culture lovers around the world.
Culture Trails Cover
We worked with publishers Lonely Planet to bring readers of
Pacific Coast Highway Travel an extract from their new book Culture Trails.
Click over to Vintage Hollywood and you can read a typical spread from the book.
You can also visit one of our other travel websites, Greece Travel Secrets, to
read a second extract: Artistic Athens. If you want to know about the rest of
the book, read on.
Culture Trails Contents
We were impressed with the extracts we saw, and even more impressed
when a finished copy of the book reached us. It's a big and handsome coffee
table book that will make a great present for anyone you know with a bad case
of wanderlust, or indeed a wonderful treat for yourself.
Culture Trails Sample Spread
You can see sample spreads from the book on this page and on
the two extracts from the book, so we don't need to tell you how good it looks.
Just imagine them blown up to full size. Each spread picks a cultural theme
that's appropriate to the destination, so for Havana it's music, for Copenhagen
it's design and for Ethiopia it's ancient religions. You can see that the
cultural topics are quite wide-ranging, as are the destinations, from Australia
to the USA. The 52 perfect weekends are spread across 33 countries.
For travel in the USA there are some interesting options, in
addition to Vintage Hollywood. For the Deep South the natural choice is the
Blues Trail, from Memphis into Mississippi. It's a route we've driven
ourselves, to places like Clarksdale and Greenwood, and the author Joe Bindloss
captures the atmosphere well.
Culture Trails Sample Spread
The same author also writes about New York, covering Bob Dylan and Greenwich Village. This is another place we've been lucky enough to visit and wander around, and again the spread reads well and mentions all the best places, like the Chelsea Hotel and the Bitter End. The other two US entries are Cape Cod's literary landscapes and Washington DC as portrayed in political TV dramas like House of Cards.
The spreads each have an introductory essay followed by a route linking all the main places. There are then suggestions on Where to Stay, Where to Eat and Drink, and Celebrations. This bit lists any special events related to the cultural theme so you can plan your visit to take them in, if you want to.
Culture Trails Sample Spread
A few of the other topics covered around the world include:
• On a Classical High in Vienna
• Confronting Soviet Ghosts in Bulgaria
• Literary Paris through the Eyes of Hemingway
• Traditional Music in the Wild West, Ireland
• Mackintosh & the Glasgow Style
• Aboriginal Art in the Northern Territory, Australia
• Tokyo Pop Culture
• Finnish Sauna Culture
If that doesn't get your travel bug itching, there's also Bob Marley's Jamaica, Venice's art masterpieces, comic-strip art in Brussels (great choice!), and the creative artisans of Marrakesh. We loved the eclectic collection and it's certainly fired us up to take some of these culture trails.
Culture Trails Sample Spread
Don't expect the thoroughness of a guidebook, as the
strength of this book is in enjoying the readable essays. The practical
sections are limited to a couple of hotels and a couple of eating or drinking
recommendations, though they're usually ones that link with the theme.
You'll
still need to do a little bit of work to turn these culture trails into perfect
weekends. Other than that, you're good to go with this highly enjoyable book. You can buy it on Amazon.
Other books pages
The Frommer's Guide to Seattle has good information about the city and side excursions to the Olympic National Park and elsewhere, plus free city and area map.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews an Olympic Peninsula Travel Guide published by the Beautiful Pacific Northwest website.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel picks the best museums in Los Angeles including the top art museums and museums for families.
Some of the best California Backroads are included in Backroads of the California Coast, with 24 highly recommended driving tours off the Pacific Coast Highway.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel picks ten fun family things to do in Los Angeles, from Universal Studios to the Los Angeles Zoo and Children’s Museum.
Pacific Coast Highway travel suggests the best time to visit Los Angeles with information about the weather and climate month by month and season by season.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel’s travel guide to Los Angeles, including dining and accommodation options, public transport, and the city’s best things to do.
The Los Angeles travel guide book from Lonely Planet also covers San Diego and Southern California, including Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, and Disneyland.
California Living and Eating by Eleanor Maidment is a handsome coffee table book celebrating the food and lifestyle of the Golden State with 80 tasty recipes.
The Washington State travel guide from Frommer's covers hotels in Seattle, driving the Pacific Coast Highway, Olympic National Park, where to eat and more.
West Coast Road Eats is a road food guide covering the Pacific Coast from California through Oregon to Washington, giving the best road trip food stops.
Epic Drives of the World from Lonely Planet describes 50 of the world's most exciting road trips, including, of course, the Pacific Coast Highway.
This John Steinbeck California Guide, A Journey into Steinbeck's California, shows readers how towns like Monterey, Carmel and Salinas influenced the author.
Pacific Coast Highway guides include our own printed book and ebook guides to the best hotels along the PCH, available in paperback, PDF and Kindle formats.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews the Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip guide from Moon covering California, Oregon and Washington
The Green Guide to the USA West from Michelin covers California, the Pacific North West, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, New Mexico, and even Kansas and Alaska.
101 free San Francisco attractions and things to do are in the Kindle guide, 101 Free Things to Do in San Francisco, in the Travel Free eGuidebooks series.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel picks the ten best things to see at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, split between The Getty Center and Getty Villa.
One of the best guides to West Coast RV Parks, covering campgrounds in California, Oregon, and Washington, is West Coast RV Camping from Moon Guides.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel's book review of Insider's Guide to San Francisco guidebook by Jill Loeffler, publisher of the San Francisco Tourism Tips website.
The Pacific Coast Highway in California book shows in historic photos the building of the Pacific Coast Highway from its earliest beginnings in 1911.
The Santa Barbara Guidebook from Moon Handbooks also covers California’s Central Coast with Ventura, San Luis Obispo, wine country, and Hearst Castle.
Northwest Wine Country is a food and wine lover's guide to vineyards, fine dining, accommodation, restaurants in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel recommends the best spa hotels in Los Angeles including the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Hotel Bel-Air, Four Seasons, and Ritz-Carlton.
The Best Coast is a west coast travel guide, sub-titled A Road Trip Atlas it doesn't use photos but instead has hundreds of beautiful illustrations.
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