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

In case you have forgottan, the Earth is a very wonderful place. This book reminds you that there are still lots of places to visit and things to see!
However, like all lists you might not agree with the authors list of places to visit. Especially, if you enjoy the "road less traveled", you might miss the spirit of exploration in some of these places mentioned here. But well, there is a reason that lots of people go to see the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids. Obviously the best things cant be hidden. Moments of serene beauty off the beaten track, you wont find in this book, thats something you will have to find yourself. Again, its ok, you still want to see these 1000 places mentioned in this book.

-Simon

This is a great book to get ideas for traveling. It covers the many obvious places, but also covers those that one would not find on a generic travel tour. It covers sites, entertainment, hotels, restaurants and more. It also tells you the best time to travel. It even tells you when it is the most crowded and gives advice not to travel to these areas during some of the most crowded times. It covers festivals, markets, fairs and more. Now, the restaurants and hotel recommendations are not for those on a budget, but it gives you the "musts" for places to stay and eat in that area. It also provides websites for most of the locations so you can look up additional information since it only gives a brief overview. This is a great book for those who are wanting to plan a trip, but don't really know where to go. This pretty much covers every region of the world. I am personally backpacking through Europe and Asia. I am still reading through this book with a highlighter and little post-it to bookmark my favorite places. I am not using this as a trip planner, but as an endless book of recommendations for my trip.

I don't know, I guess I must be a different kind of traveller. I like to visit places that are astonishing yet not highly visited. I'm the kind of traveller that goes to those "best-kept secret" desinations to see things that most people don't even know about. I mean, who goes to Moosonee for vacation?

I bought 1,000 places hoping it would recomment places of great beauty, off the beaten track, where culture and ambiance haven't been homogenized into modern life yet. Sort of life Globe Trekker, only in book form.

How disappointed I was to find out it was recommending tourist traps, five star hotels, expensive tourist haunts and so on instead of giving us insider info on where the little-know best places are.

It's not a bad book, it's just full of places you are bound to see if you visit the major tourist places anyway. So much so that it seemed as if the author might have gotten her info from visitor's bureaus instead of from personal experiences.

Yes, the sites she recommends are wonderful, but a little too obvious. It's like saying, when you travel to NYC for the first time, be sure to visit the Empire State Building. You know all the tourists are going to go there anyway, so why bother putting that on a list of places to see before you die?

But that's just me. I don't like resorts as much as I like little penizons in Slovakia.

I was prepared to dislike this book. It was given to me as a present. The whole thesis seemed dangerous. If everyone tried to visit the same 1000 places they would be overwhelmed with tourists. Then who would want to go? Also, the very idea that everyone would like the same thing seemed over simplified. Last, how could a mere travel agent understand my sophisticated preferences?

In the sense of full disclosure, let me say that I received this book when I was 68 years old and had already traveled widely. My wife and I like a wide variety of things: from elegant big city hotels to camping in the wilderness. Museums, symphonic music, opera, and ballet are important. So is trout fishing. Last, we are unabashed foodies that plan restaurants carefully in advance.

When I picked up the book and started reading it, I was surprised. When I read about places I knew well, I had to admit that the things mentioned were the most interesting, not to be missed, things. For the last four years we have been consulting 1,000 Places before taking overseas trips. It has given us some ideas that we would not have had otherwise and they turned out to be very good ideas. Also, the places we visited were not over run by zillions of people who had read about them in 1,000 places.

Yes, it is a good hotel book. What do you want, a bad hotel book? It is always best to double check with Michelin if possible, but if a hotel is good it will probably not change too quickly. Restaurants are a different story. They can change overnight and 1,000 Places limited restaurant coverage can not be relied on.

This book should be titled "1000 hotels to stay in before you die". There are so many wonderful places and people to visit that are not even mentioned in the book.