Product Description: "A top-notch walking tour of Paris. . . . The author's encyclopedic knowledge of the city and its artists grants him a mystical gift of access: doors left ajar and carriage gates left open foster his search for the city's magical story...read more

Part adventure story, part cultural history the author of Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light explores the phenomenon of pilgrimage along the age-old Way of Saint James in France Driven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises David Downie and his wife set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric route takes 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths―a 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela―“The Way” for short. The object of any pilgrimage is an inward journey manifested in a long, reflective walk. For Downie, the inward journey met the outer one: a combination of self-discovery and physical regeneration. More than 200,000 pilgrims take the highly commercialized Spanish route annually, but few cross France. Downie had a goal: to go from Paris to the Pyrenees on age-old trails, making the pilgrimage in his own maverick way. 32 pages of color photographs by Alison Harris. 32 pages of color photographs

Product Description: [Library Edition Audiobook CD in sturdy Vinyl case.] [Read by Max Winter] Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions...read more

Product Description: [Read by Max Winter] Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Élysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens, and the aristocratic Ile Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine...read more

Product Description: Like all great cities and yet unlike any other Paris is alive and fluttering, it changes with the light, buffeted by Seine-basin breezes. This place called Paris is at once the imaginary land of literature and film, a distant view through shifting, misty lenses, and a vibrant contemporary city where a kaleidoscope of millions seems bent on the grand conspiracy of enjoying life...read more

A culinary tour of Rome offers more than one hundred recipes from the Eternal City, as well as information on subjects as diverse as Easter picnicking rites and Rome's coffee culture.

Product Description: Looking for a travel guide that goes where other guides fear to tread? One that rides roughshod over ad-copy puffery to smartly deliver the real scoop on a destination's sites and attractions? One that dares to be honest, hip, and fun? Look no more...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: To travelers, the Italian Riviera and its famous villages-- Portofino, the Cinque Terre-- have meant "vacation," "sea" and "sun" for more than a century. To food lovers everywhere its culinary triumphs such as pesto, focaccia and ravioli are icons of Italian cooking...read more

(view table of contents)