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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.
Other books pages
Lonely Planet's Guide to Cycling the USA West Coast is a bicycling guidebook for anyone touring California, Oregon and Washington by bike.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel's California Camping book review rates the 20th anniversary edition of Moon's complete guide to over 1400 tent and RV campgrounds.
Lighthouses of the Pacific Coast, published by Voyageur Press, is a guide in words and pictures to historic lighthouses along the Pacific Coast Highway.
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.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews the Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip guide from Moon covering California, Oregon and Washington
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.
The Michelin Guide to California is a gourmet's guide to the best restaurants along the Pacific Coast Highway and elsewhere in California.
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.
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's book review of Insider's Guide to San Francisco guidebook by Jill Loeffler, publisher of the San Francisco Tourism Tips website.
The Michelin Green Guide to California covers the whole state and is good on maps, the sights, major cities and towns, less good on hotels and restaurants.
This John Steinbeck California Guide, A Journey into Steinbeck's California, shows readers how towns like Monterey, Carmel and Salinas influenced the author.
The Pacific Coast Highway in California book shows in historic photos the building of the Pacific Coast Highway from its earliest beginnings in 1911.
Greetings from California is a beautiful coffee-table book which describes the legends, landmarks and lore of California, including the Pacific Coast Highway.
Los Angeles Airport hotels include Hilton, Radisson, Marriott, Embassy Suites, Crowne Plaza and other top names, all of them within a mile or so of LAX.
To John Steinbeck Monterey's Cannery Row was a place of sardine canneries, bums and honky tonks, but today the Monterey Aquarium attracts visitors.
Brewpubs and good beer are at the heart of the Good Beer Guide to the West Coast USA which lists the best bars and breweries from Seattle to San Diego.
Pacific Coast Highway travel offers advice on driving from LA to Hearst Castle, including distance, journey time, and route.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews an Olympic Peninsula Travel Guide published by the Beautiful Pacific Northwest website.
The guide to California Bed and Breakfast Inns lists over 250 boutique hotels, wine country cottages and more.
Northwest Wine Country is a food and wine lover's guide to vineyards, fine dining, accommodation, restaurants in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia.
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.
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.
Soul of Los Angeles from French publishers Jonglez is a travel guide to 30 Exceptional Experiences in California's largest city.
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.
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