At Wit’s End: Memories From 20 Years of Travel

THE OBSESSIVE TRAVELER: Or Why I Don’t Steal Towels From Great Hotels Any More by David Dale (Angus & Robertson/HarperCollins, $10 paper).

Its publisher describes this book as “Travel/Humor,” but there is less humor here than wit. Dale is an Australian journalist, and the author of such other works as “The Official Liars Handbook” and the Australian edition of “The Official Foodie Handbook.” In The Obsessive Traveler--based, he says, on 20 years’ worth of travel diaries--he applies a journalist’s eye for detail, an essayist’s ability to extrapolate the universal from the particular and a wiseacre’s turn of phrase to a wide range of travel-related subjects, from parochial guidebooks to sexy siestas to garrulous taxi drivers. It quickly becomes apparent that the author is an obsessive traveler in the sense that he’ll go anywhere and ask any question in pursuit of a memorable travel experience.

His book may be short on punch lines, but along the way Dale writes sagely on the trappings of “faux travel” (i.e., anonymous resorts with only the most tenuous relation to their surroundings, or package tours serving up little more than travel-poster cliches); confidently expresses his often unorthodox opinions of restaurants in many countries (he calls the excellent but hardly transcendent Silverio in Bologna “the best restaurant in the world, probably”--and lists the now-defunct St. Estephe in Manhattan Beach as one of the three runners-up); and scatters throughout these pages a fascinating miscellany of information of all kinds--for instance, the fact that the 15th-Century palace which now houses the famed Danieli Hotel in Venice was the site of the world’s first public opera performance (of Monteverdi’s “Proserpina Rapina,” in 1630).

THE INTREPID TRAVELER: Getting the Ultimate Experience for Your Travel Dollars by Adam Rogers (Global View Press, $14.95, paper).

This volume (a bit thin for its price) seems aimed at a different sort of obsessive traveler--the tremulous novice who wants to know every little thing about What’s Going To Happen as he sets off into the big, bad world. Rogers is himself anything but a novice at traveling, having spent five years visiting 50 countries on four continents. But he must think his audience has never crossed the street. His tips are mostly so obvious and common-sensical as to verge on self-parody. Here is Rogers on renting a house abroad: “Check in with a local real estate office and ask them what they have available.” Here he is on learning foreign languages: “Learning another language is a lot of work, but has many advantages.” If you need to blow 15 bucks to find out stuff like this, maybe you shouldn’t cross the street.

THE VEGETARIAN TRAVELER by Andrew Sanger (Grafton/HarperCollins, $8 paper).

In most of the world you’ve pretty much got to be both obsessive and intrepid if you want to stick to a vegetarian diet, especially in those countries where eating meat is considered a privilege and not a political impropriety (and thus where at least a bit of meat, however minor, finds itself into all kinds of dishes). Sanger’s book will make vegetarian life much easier for travelers in Europe and the Middle East (the only regions he covers). He has researched eating habits carefully and offers detailed tips for avoiding meat and its byproducts--even in France, which he describes as a sort of hell for vegetarians, where “anything edible is fair game,” “tripe, offal, brains and even more repugnant parts of the body are specialties” and French mouths water at the sight of “new-born lambs in a field.” He even includes useful phrases (in Denmark, just say “Jeg er vegetar”) and glossaries of popular vegetarian dishes, and warns readers away from dishes that might sound meat-free but aren’t. (“Paella de la huerta; allegedly a meatless, fishless paella . . . Even if no meat is included, chicken fat may be used in cooking.”)

SUPER FAMILY VACATIONS, revised edition, by Martha Shirk and Nancy Klepper (HarperPerennial, $14 paper).

Some folks travel to get away from their kids, others to get closer to them. Super Family Vacations offers sensible advice on how to plan the latter sort of getaways efficiently, as well as detailed listings--many of them with a “we’ve just been there ourselves” immediacy to them--of child-appropriate resorts, guest ranches, ski areas, “history places,” “nature places,” adventure trips and cruises, all over the U.S. and, to a lesser degree, in Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico. One quibble: In the entry on the Alisal Ranch in Solvang, the Santa Ynez Valley is described as “the southernmost wine-producing area in California.” It isn’t, by at least 200 miles. That honor goes to the Temecula region, in southern Riverside County. This is the sort of thing you might want to know after you’ve been on the road with Tucker and Courtney for a few days.

BEST HIKES WITH CHILDREN: San Francisco’s North Bay by Bill McMillon with Kevin McMillon (The Mountaineers, $12.95 paper).

Of particular interest to families headed north, this illustrated guidebook outlines some 90 hikes and treks and long walks, from the top of San Francisco Bay north to Gualala to the complete with maps, brief notes on history, geography and flora and fauna and assessments of the difficulty of each one for children. Don’t leave the trail head without it. (A companion volume, to the southern San Francisco Bay Area, is due from the same publisher next month.)