Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

...but I wouldn't flog your back too much for ever being or still being a 'tourist'. All travellers were first tourist. I don't consider the appreciation of the planet and others' lifestyles that tourism opened my eyes to as loathsome.

Although to agree with Wallace, the thought of mass-market tourist cruise ships surging towards virgin Antarctica or around the Galapagos Islands leaves a distasteful, seasickness taste in my mouth.

Consider the Lobster (2005) is a collection of essays by novelist David Foster Wallace. It is also the title of one of the essays, which was published in Gourmet Magazine in 2004. Read more!

Stanfords' Travel Bookshop, London

If wandering around the travel section of your local Waterstones gives you nearly as much of a rush as ordering that first cold beer in a new country, Stanfords' flagship store - 12-14 Long Acre, Covent Garden - will feel like a round-the-world trip for your itchy-footed soul.

The shop's three floors are stacked high with travel guides, maps old and new, globes inflatable, illuminated or traditional, travel lit, pictorial coffee-table hardbacks and geographical miscellany . It's the only bookstore I've visited that attracts backpackers like moths to flames or like mosquitoes to ... well, backpackers sleeping in beach bunks.

Mixed in amongst travellers of the armchair or imminently departing varieties might be commissioning editors from the capital's travel publishing houses. They've just stopped in to handle the competitors' latest editions and sniff out a few ideas for next year's publishing programme. I particularly like sitting on the window ledges up on the first floor when I'm there 'researching'.

The secret to the store's success has to be its decor and range of stock: let's call it the ambiance of sun-crinkled, well-travelled great uncle's study. The buyers here seem to have filled their shelves with books on destinations and subjects that fascinate them and not just those that will sell 100 copies every week. For example, you'll find that hardback copies of Graffiti World are displayed as prominently as Lonely Planet's ubiquitous Blue List.

Stanfords' website is just as diligent in its offering of diverse travel inspiration and features in-store events listings , interviews with the likes of Simon Calder , Bill Bryson and Michael Palin , and articles written by its staff.

Stanfords is the UK's leading specialist retailer of maps, travel books and other travel accessories, having been established in 1853 by Edward Stanford... read more of the store's history here. Read more!

101 Weekends In Europe by Robin Barton

This travel blog is no travel bandwagon. The Sandwagon prefers to follow the potholed back roads over speedy autobahns, picking the less-traversed tracks over those obvious travel trends. From the back of the Sandwagon, wind in my hair, I'll always report on as diverse a range of travel-related stimuli as possible.

That said, I work full-time for a travel publisher and have 25 days annual leave to play with. Obviously I can't set off on a 60 day horse trek across Mongolia or dedicate months of my time to paddling the length of the River Amazon in a one-woman coracle. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to flee the office and explore the world that I write about far more thoroughly, but for the foreseeable it's simply not viable.

So, I'm sorry that I can't blog from Everest Base Camp this week but I can give you insider tip offs and reviews from the travel publishing industry. New Holland's latest offering, 101 Weekends in Europe is one for travellers who, like me, shoehorn their passion for travel in alongside their passion for the dream day job. An anthology of ideas for weekend breaks, Barton's book is perfect inspiration for anyone that's short on time but brimming with curiosity for different places and lifestyles. This weekend Wenceslas Square, next Naples... April to Amsterdam, then Madrid in May. That's good enough for me.

101 Weekends in Europe written by Robin Barton and published by New Holland
Published September 2008. Paperback @ £16.99

Click here to buy it Read more!

Opera Seaon: Milan, La Scala @ Leicester Phoenix

Sandwagon's support and admiration goes to Leicester's Phoenix Arts theatre for showing recordings from La Scala (Milan) Opera season. I hope this venture has been well supported by the city, because not only is La Scala one the world's most prized venues its season also deserves this level of mainstream Midlands exposure. Equally, we mere mortals this side of Europe deserve the chance to view world-renowned performances that only the rich, famous, fur collared and sharp suited Milanese are usually party to.

Good work Leicester Phoenix and good luck with this venture.

Sunday 20th April at 2.30pm is AIDA (which opened the 2006 season) by Giuseppe Verdi. Tickets £12.00 (much cheaper than the real thing)

Phoenix Leicester, La Scala Read more!

Destinations 2008 - Earls Court, London

It's been a cold few weeks since London's Destinations travel fair. By now I'm guessing that every visitor's 2008 holiday planning 2008 is well under way. Opening on a windy, rainy Thursday (31st Jan), the show was a timely tonic for the British winter. Battered umbrellas stashed and soggy coats were swapped for wines, cocktails, snacks and traditional dances courtesy of the assembled worldwide tourist boards. Trekking to Earls Court in this weather should have rewarded its visitors with infinite globetrotting inspiration.

Wanderlust's Travel Award ceremony took to the The World Entertainment Stage before lunch. With the likes of Singapore Airlines, Bradt Guides, Lonely Planet and the specialist tour operators hanging off Lyn Hughes’ every word, I think it's fair to say that the travel glossy put Destinations' official media sponsor in the 'too late to the pool' shaded sunlounger spot. While The Times punted its travel magazine's subscriptions from a stand modestly hidden alongside the Meet the Expert Theatres, Wanderlust monopolised centrally-located exhibition real estate. Their Travel Photographer Of The Year gallery space, basked in its usual popularity.

I've visited Destinations for the past few years and to be honest there weren't too many newbies infiltrating this somewhat staid face of the industry. There's Wanderlust; Bradt; Travellers Tales (the travel writing course providers); the Italian tourist board touting pasta; the Chilean tourist board, white wine. All doing wonderful jobs but not really pushing the imagination of the general public beyond the usual 'must-do this' of destinations. I haven't seen the Wonders Of The World or visited every continent, but I still want travel inspiration to open my eyes to something new. Perhaps travel blogs and online travel networks surpass exhibition stands.

Give me Gridskipper ; Boots ‘n’ All;
Itchy Feet Magazine and Vagablogging all in one room, so that I can see and talk to them... soon... please. Even if it has to be in Second Life!

This said, Sandwagon loved these things about Destinations, London 2008 ...

Taking a breather in the press lounge, listening in as Jonathan Scott - of Big Cat Diary fame - gave a live radio interview. And later in the day, watching him sort old-school slides for his Expert Speaker presentation.

David Shukman (BBC's Environment & Science Correspondent) and Justin Francis (responsibletravel.com) discussing the paradoxical notion of carbon-neutral travel.

Mark Davidson's presentation of his quality travel photography - an inspiring travel writer/photographer who also has celebral palsy and succeeds in this demanding field. He single-handedly renewed my faith in the Destinations fair and a travel media too often stifled and made scary by the old boys' network.

How Mike Unwin, author of Bradt's 100 Animals to See Before They Die (lucky barrrrrrstard of an author), convinced me that this was not as depressing a book commission to receive, research and write as it first seemed. The fact that the book's No 1 animal at risk of extinction - the Yangtze River Dolphin - actually became extinct in the time it took to publish a book is the saddest thing I've heard since working in publishing (the timeline from final page proof to printed book being just about two mths!). But then he would be fairly upbeat about the book, the researched having enabled him to see gorillas in their natural habitat ... I probably never will, nor my kids or theirs to come, or to come or to come.

What do you think of Destinations?

Never visited before? It moves to the Birmingham NEC on 29 Feb - 2 March.

Buy Tickets Read more!

Sarajevo at No.3 in Top 10 travel articles

Boots'n'All is a well-used travel network of writers, travellers and bloggers. In their latest newsletter they name their top ten travel articles of January 2008. I'm chuffed to say that my Sarajevo piece made it to bronze medal position.

See the article (edited a little weirdly in parts by Boots'n'All) here Read more!

Polly Evans quirkily adventures, online

I met Polly Evans - a successful author of chick-travelling Lit - in Sarajevo, in the back of a people carrier en route to a gala dinner held by the Bosnia and Herzegovina tourist board. We were off to celebrate British Airways' new flight from Gatwick to the Bosnian capital and to learn more about this emerging eastern European destination.

Polly has now launched her own website and it's a good one to watch for inspiration as well as news of her recent travels.

No doubt she'll soon be adding posts soon on her latest book Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, in which she shares trial and tribulations of driving sled dogs in Canada's Yukon Territory. Published by Bantam Books, £7.99 on Feb 11th.

See Polly Evans' website here Read more!

Mona Lisa Museum Pass turns 20

En Juin 2008, le Paris Museum Pass fêtera son 20e anniversaire ... it's no wonder that this particular tourist pass - first sold in 1988 - is still going strong.

Time spent queuing up for numerous galleries and musuems will take up valuable snogging/shopping/vin rouge swilling time during a city break in the French capital. So before parting with those euros for un sandwich au jambon, you're first purchase should be the Paris Musueum Pass.

Organising a suprise romantic weekender? Buy your passes in advance - click here - to have your beau falling into bed at the end of the day's sightseeing, amazed at your sauve city-savvy.

Good for 2, 4 or 6 days' culture-vulturing, the Pass will have you queue jumping and bypassing ticket booths at famous cultural must-visits ranging from the Louvre to the Château de Versailles.

Click for complete list

2-day pass costs 30euros
4-days 45euros
6-days 60euros

Paris Museum Pass Official website Read more!

Keep 'doing' Italy. Travel Weekly article

It's good to see that Travel Weekly are encouraging the travel trade to promote and sell Italy - and not just the obvious parts.


Click for Alternative City Breaks article Read more!

Italy - not for travel snobs

Yep, travel snobs will probably be closing this page….about ... right now… at the sight of the 'I' word. I'm glad. I’d rather send them through to this 'Cycle Iraq' article Click if you're too well travelled for Italy than try to convince them that The Boot will always deserve as high a position on the 'must visit' list as possible.

And Italy isn't just a 'must visit' destination. It's a visit, visit again and keep visiting until you’ve visited it all - and then go live there - destination. I've been indulging my Roman Catholic by inheritance-meets-food, fashion, art loving side in the homeland of the Pope, on average, about three times a year for the last eight years. And it all began on a slow day at a former workplace (Travelbag: Nov 00) when Colette booked cheap flights on a whim... Buzzair (swallowed up into Ryanair empire) to Milano Linate airport. (Linate airport is actually in Milan). These days Ryanair drops off at Milan-Bergamo; an hour-ish coach journey from the central Milan.

Me. Hooked? Yes - not to the degree of a surgeon who could afford to buy a retreat in Tuscany - but enough to have sat beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa three times; walked the Duomo roof in Milan at least four times; watched Inter Milan and Juventus play; critiqued da Vinci's The Last Supper, Michelangelo's David and Sistine Chapel, Botticelli's Venus and enough works of art and architecture to fill the British Gallery five times over.

Then there’s Mussolini's train station in Florence and the square where he was hung (yep, in Milan); the night I drunkenly steered a passenger ferry across Lake Como, invited by the captain because we (three girls) were wearing England shirts with Beckham on our backs; walked the rooftop test track in Turin, the one from The Italian Job; climbed Mount Vesuvius and tiptoed around Pompeii’s ruins.

I'll go again this year I’m sure, and experience something completely different all over again. Travel snobs. You miss out. You are not missed.

(I hate this verb in relation to travel) ‘Do' Venice, Rome and Florence. Then go back again and again; Turin, Bologna, Genoa, Milan, Cinque Terre, Positano, Amalfi, Capri, Naples, Verona...

Read more!