1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List

INTRODUCTION The Story of This Book Is it nature or nurture that sends a person out onto the Road—that whispers in one’s ear that it’s time to take off and make for the horizon, just to see what’s out there? The urge to travel—to open our minds and move beyond the familiar—is as old as man himself. It’s what drove the ancient Romans to visit Athens’s Acropolis and Verona’s amphitheater. It’s what sent Marco Polo off on his momentous journey east, and what moved St. Augustine of Hippo to write, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page.” Whether we go to London for the weekend or to a place that’s utterly alien, travel changes us, sometimes superficially, sometimes profoundly. It is a classroom without walls. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you about my own wanderlust. Family legend (never proven) has it that we’re somehow related to Mark Twain, America’s great storyteller and also one of the preeminent globetrotters of his day. How then to explain my mother’s reaction when I had my own first Great Adventure? It was the late 1950s, and Atlantic City was as exotic and unknown to me as Shangri-la—all sand and sea, hotels and boardwalk, and the intimation of greater things just beyond what I could see from the family beach blanket. I set off at the first opportunity, but after what seemed only a few precious minutes of intoxicating discovery (in fact several hours), I was snatched up by my apoplectic mother and a cadre of relieved lifeguards and brought back to the roost. This is my earliest memory: I had heard the siren call of the great, global beyond, and I had answered. I was hooked. I was four. Fast-forward to college graduation. Campus buddies were heading straight for Wall Street apprenticeships, international banking programs, and family business obligations, but I made a beeline for the airport and my own private Grand Tour through the marvels of Italy and its neighbors. Could one make a living off la dolce vita? I was amazed when my first articles got published, but then I realized: one could. Many guidebooks and innumerable articles later, I found myself at a round table facing publisher Peter Workman and his right-hand editor, the late Sally Kovalchick, who told me about their desire to compile the world’s most enticing and intriguing treasures between two covers, and their belief that I was up to the challenge. I was on board. When it came time to actually do it, though—to choose from the nearly bottomless grab bag of the world’s possibilities, both legendary and unsung—I realized I was in for a lengthy battle with philosophy and methodology and all the questions anyone who flips through this book is bound to ask. How did I arrive at these particular destinations and events?