Travel Diaries

The history of Iceland began 1,200 years ago, when a frustrated Viking captain and his useless navigator ran aground in the middle of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, the island was no longer just a layover for the Arctic tern. Instead, it became a nation whose diplomats and musicians, sailors and soldiers, volcanoes and flowers, quietly altered the globe forever. How Iceland Changed the World takes readers on a tour of history, showing them how Iceland played a pivotal role in events as diverse as the French Revolution, the Moon Landing, and the foundation of Israel.

Traveling the World in search of new business seems like a glamorous occupation, but in reality, it presents many complications, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. Malcolm Teasdale is one of those fortunate people, who has been given the chance to experience the many wonderful places and people on our planet. Chilling out on vacation in a far off distant exotic place is a dream come true for most of us.

Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming”, a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces - the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons - in the remote reaches of the American West.

Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate. This was partly to let his wife and children experience life in Bryson's homeland - and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him. But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain.

When expat blogger and mother of four Eva Melusine Thieme first harbors the idea of ringing out her three years in Africa on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, it sounds easy. In fact, it has all the trappings of a dream vacation: no cooking, no fighting kids, and an army of porters to lug everything up the mountain. What can go wrong? Tag along as Eva takes you on her journey up the slopes of Kilimanjaro together with her teenage son and a group of hilarious South African friends.

Secrets From My Travel Diaries will transport you back to 1997, when the author, as a college student, ventured from a small Ohio town to study and live in Germany and France, eventually traveling to more than ten countries. Her diaries, written on train rides and after late-night adventures at the disco, helped her clarify her thoughts and feelings at a pivotal time in her life.

Faced with midlife and realizing that unless she gets her skates on, she'll never get to live out her fantasy of traveling the world with her family (and be like that woman from Eat, Pray, Love), Liz plans a year-long globetrotting trip. Annoyingly, things don't quite go as expected.

Follow the inspirational journey of a former stockbroker who leaves his unfulfilling desk job in search of a meaningful life. He sets out from Los Angeles on a vintage motorbike, determined to circumnavigate the globe surviving only on the kindness of strangers. Incredibly, he makes his way across the U.S., through Europe, India, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and finally to Canada and back to the Hollywood sign, by asking strangers for shelter, food, and gas.

O diário de um mago é o relato da peregrinação feita por Paulo Coelho em 1986 pelo Caminho de Santiago. Motivada por sua profunda ambição espiritual e pelo desejo de se tornar escritor, a travessia se transforma em algo maior do que ele imaginava. Enquanto narra sua jornada mística e as duras lições que aprendeu com o guia Petrus, Paulo entende que o extraordinário não reside em rituais e segredos mágicos, mas na simplicidade e no cotidiano das pessoas comuns.

Nelson Algren’s two travel writing books describe his journeys through the seamier sides of great American cities and the international social and political landscapes of the mid-1960s. Algren at Sea brings them together in one volume. Notes from a Sea Diary offers one of the most remarkable appraisals of Ernest Hemingway ever written. Who Lost an American? is a whirlwind spin through Paris and Playboy clubs, New York publishing and Dublin pubs, Crete, and Chicago.

Fresh off a breakup with her cheating Italian boyfriend in Como, 24-year-old New Yorker Jayne is emotionally fried and financially...let’s just say her wallet is crying in five languages. She’s got two options: fly home to Manhattan and face her sister’s smug “I told you so,” or stick it out in the land of la dolce chaos and chase her fashion dreams.

Most people would regard it as irresponsible madness for a father to take his 17-year-old son, riding old and somewhat worn-out XT500 motorcycles, on a four-month ride across Africa. But Lawrence Bansby did. Lawrence and his son Gareth set off on their old but bulletproof XT500s with a handful of spare parts, very little money, and the three Michelin maps that cover Africa. The plan was to travel north from their home in Natal, South Africa, then west through Zaire, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Niger, and, finally, across the Sahara through Algeria, but it was not to be.

Eat, Pray, Love meets Claude Monet in this epistolary ode to Paris. What started as a whim in a Latin Quarter café blossomed into Janice MacLeod’s years-long endeavor to document and celebrate life in Paris, sending monthly snippets of her paintings and writings to the mailboxes of ardent followers around the world. Now, Dear Paris collects the entirety of the Paris Letters project: 140 illustrated messages discussing everything from macarons to Montmartre.

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire with her husband as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving her two-year-old daughter behind with her sister, Agatha set sail at the end of January and did not return until December, but she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing in detail the exotic places and people she encountered as the mission travelled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada.

Preparing for the first winter in his new home, ready to embrace the slower pace of early retirement, he soon discovers that it’s not working. From floods to explosions, from protection rackets to hospitalisations, from coping with the death of his hero to trying to find solace in a confusing and abstract relationship, this is a frank, funny and always heartfelt story of how not working doesn’t always work out, and it might just be Graham’s wildest ride yet.

Ever wish you can leave the rat race for the simple life? Here's some inspiration. On Mexican Time is Cohan's passionate, evocatively written memoir of how he and his wife found a new home - and a new lease on life - in the charming 16th century hill town of San Miguel de Allende.

Ich lade Sie ein, liebe Leser, mir auf eine Sprachreise zu folgen, die ich vor 20 Jahren unternahm. Der Gedanke, nach Malta zu reisen, war ein spontaner, um aus der Not eine Tugend zu machen. Wie gut war der Englischunterricht, den ich bisher in der Abendschule besuchte, wirklich? Was würde geschehen, wenn ich selbst tagtäglich gezwungen bin, mich englisch auszudrücken.

Adrian Ring is in a coma. Shot by a traitor in his midst, he has slipped into an existence where his consciousness is neither alive nor dead. He has gone to the other side. Bolstered by the presence of the friends he has lost since "that day", Adrian embarks on exploring this frozen landscape of dreams and nightmares. Transported through time and space, Adrian sees a hunting trip firsthand with Gavin and then relives one of Gilbert's worst firefights during his Vietnam era. Then, he sees something that hasn't happened yet, but will. And what he sees will change the world forever.

La narradora viaja por primera vez a Japón para visitar a su joven hijo, quien se ha ido a vivir a ese lejano país. A la extrañeza y fascinación por esa cultura tan distinta, se le suma el descubrimiento de su propio hijo, ahora un adulto independiente que ha armado su vida en otro lugar, en otra dimensión.

After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave—confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.