Europe Travel

Culture Smart! guides provide travelers with vital information about the values and attitudes of the people they will meet, and practical advice on how to make the most of their time abroad. Travelers to Poland in particular, a country in transition from its Communist past, need to be open-minded and well-informed.

From the bestselling author of McCarthy's Bar, this is a hilarious and thought-provoking journey into his Irish heritage around the world. As a veteran traveller, Pete McCarthy has long been intrigued that the emigrant Irish can be found in all corners of the globe. Determined to pin down mythical tales of his own clan history, Pete is thrust into a world-wide adventure that reveals an unsettled and poignant history, while unearthing a good pint in the most unexpected locations.

Shaped by many cultures, the Johanniter left the most impressive traces and gave Malta a golden age in the 17th and 18th centuries. The islands in the heart of the Mediterranean look back on 7000 years of history, which was of fateful importance for both the Orient and the Occident.

In unserem schnelllebigen Alltag nehmen Stress und schlechte Laune allzu oft eine große Rolle ein. Wir nehmen uns keine Zeit, um zu genießen, machen Überstunden und ärgern uns über Kinderlärm. Wie gerne würden wir dagegen so leben wie die Menschen im Süden: innerlich gelassen, naturverbunden und der Lebensfreude zugeneigt bis ins hohe Alter. Alexander Oetker, als Korrespondent stets auf Reisen und als Restaurantkritiker Genießer von Beruf, erzählt uns auf wunderbar leichte Weise von den Menschen in den südlichen Ländern und von den Geheimnissen des Dolce-Vita-Prinzips.

A vacation in the Greek Islands will cast a magical spell. It'll take you weeks to recover from! Passport to European Travel Guides offers this comprehensive yet quick and concise five-day guide to Santorini - one of the most beautiful locales on Earth!

Planning a trip to Portugal? This guide has everything you need for a stress-free, unforgettable adventure—without spending weeks researching! Portugal is a top travel destination, but navigating a foreign country can be overwhelming. Without proper planning, you risk falling into tourist traps, overspending, or missing must-see spots.

In a small market town in the northeast of England in 1825, something momentous happened: ticket-bearing human beings started moving along wrought-iron tracks on a contraption with engine-powered wheels. The contraption was called a 'train'. What happened in Darlington, along a 26-mile line to Stockton, would kickstart the worldwide railway revolution.

In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to British tourists. The nineteenth century was to be an age driven by steam technology, mass-industrialisation and movement, and, in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights. In Tourists, the voices of these travellers – puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed – are brought vividly to life.

With travel tips and culture in our guidebooks written by a local, it is never too late to visit Paris, France. Greater Than a Tourist- Paris, France by Author Alexandra Millman offers first-hand and personal insight into the best ways to visit the City of Light. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the ‘Greater Than a Tourist’ series, this book will give you candid travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination.

The people of this land of white summer nights and pristine lakes are famous for their sisu, a form of enterprising stoicism. They are survivors: if you were stranded on a desert island, your ideal companion would be a Finn. Culture Smart! Finland describes the historical, geographical, and cultural influences that have shaped the Finnish psyche, and guides you through the working and social lives of the Finns today, offering you a deeper, more rewarding experience of this beautiful land.

The Italian Soul offers practical guidance into how we can transport a taste of the Italian “good life” into our own homes. Additionally, it explores the contemplative practices and attitudes that seem to come naturally to a people who have made an art of living and working joyfully. A cross between a travel dispatch and a spirituality guide for seekers who eschew traditional religious practices but are yearning for ways to bring more balance, sanity, and a greater sense of the transcendent into their daily lives.

Byron and Hitler were equally entranced by Rome's most famous monument, the Colosseum. Mid-Victorians admired the hundreds of varieties of flowers in its crannies and occasionally shuddered at its reputation for contagion, danger, and sexual temptation. Today it is the highlight of a tour of Italy for more than three million visitors a year, a concert arena for the likes of Paul McCartney, and a national symbol of opposition to the death penalty. Its ancient history is chock full of romantic but erroneous myths.

The spring of 2017 should have been the greatest time of Cat Marnell’s life. She was 34 and living the New York glamour life downtown, with a thriving career and a best-selling memoir. Instead, it was one of the worst. She’d gone through a protracted and traumatic breakup, nearly run out of money, and, during a month-long binge, "done something horrible" to herself that she couldn’t undo. Her troubles mounting, Marnell makes a radically simple choice: She decides to leave her problems behind.

Are you excited about planning your next trip? Do you want to try something new? Would you like some guidance from a local? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this Greater Than a Tourist book is for you.

In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.

Stuart Maconie is one of the keenest observers of English identity. Who better to take the temperature of the nation at this uncertain waymark on our national journey? Deftly weaving history and politics in engaging, conversational prose, The Full English is a love-letter to England written in Maconie’s inimitable style. As we wend our way through towns and cities, by Megabus and Avanti train, we meet a rich cast of characters and delve into the seldom-explored crevices of our national psyche.

All the information you could ever want on a ship is available online, or in the cruise line's brochures ... stats, weights, where the ship was built, all those dry facts and figures. When we began dreaming about taking on the Mediterranean, my mind leaped right past all that. What I really wanted to know was how real people actually did the cruise planning. I wanted to know where did they go, and what did they do, and what did they like, what did they wish that they had done differently?

The Innocents Abroad is a keenly observant, politically incorrect and often hilarious narration of the author’s cruise to the Holy Land aboard a retired Civil War ship. First published in 1869 and the bestselling of Twain’s works in his lifetime, The Innocents Abroad will delight listeners with the celebrated author’s musings on historic landmarks, cultural differences and silly travelling companions.

One woman, one bike and one richly entertaining, perception-altering journey of discovery. In 2015, as the Syrian War raged and the refugee crisis reached its peak, Rebecca Lowe set off on her bicycle across the Middle East. Driven by a desire to learn more about this troubled region and its relationship with the West, Lowe's 11,000-kilometre journey took her through Europe to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf and finally to Iran.

Pèlerine multirécidiviste, peu douée pour la marche et accrochée à ses cigarettes, Alix de Saint-André a pris trois fois la route de Compostelle. D'abord, depuis Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, sur le "chemin français", où s'envolèrent ses idées de méditation solitaire dans des refuges surpeuplés ; puis, de La Corogne jusqu'à Finisterre, sur le "chemin anglais" ; et enfin depuis les bords de Loire, pour accomplir ce que les Espagnols appellent "le vrai chemin", celui qu'on doit faire en partant de chez soi.