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

Take a safari into Botswana's Okavango Delta, the world's largest oasis, where "if you see 10 percent of what sees you, it's an exceptional day." Sail the Grenadines, 32 islands and hundreds of dotlike cays strung like a necklace of gems across 40 miles of pristine waters. Tour the covered souks of Aleppo, where the labyrinthine streets seem straight out of A Thousand and One Nights and frankincense and myrhh are still sold. Hike the Tasman Glacier. Climb the Tuscan hills to San Gimignano. Stay at the Hassler in Rome, or Paris's Crillon-you must, at least once. There's Canyon de Chelly, Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market, the backwaters of Kerala, Ipanema beach, the Buddhas of Borobudur, Mesa Verde's cave dwellings, the Oaxaca Saturday market, Ballybunion Golf Club.

The prose is gorgeous, seizing on exactly what makes each entry worthy of inclusion. And, following the romance, the nuts and bolts: addresses, phone and fax numbers, web sites, costs, best times to visit. Of special interest are subject-specific indexes-gorgeous beaches, destination restaurants, world-class museums-making the guide entirely user-friendly, no matter if you're dreaming or going.

Book Description
Introducing the Eighth Wonder of travel books, the New York Times bestseller that's been hailed by CBS-TV as one of the best books of the year and praised by Newsweek as the "book that tells you what's beautiful, what's inspiring, what's fun and what's just unforgettable everywhere on earth."

Packed with recommendations of the world's best places to visit, on and off the beaten path, 1,000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE is a joyous, passionate gift for travelers, an around-the-world, continent-by-continent listing of beaches, museums, monuments, islands, inns, restaurants, mountains, and more. There's Botswana's Okavango Delta, the covered souks of Aleppo, the Tuscan hills surrounding San Gimignano, Canyon de Chelly, the Hassler hotel in Rome, Ipanema Beach, the backwaters of Kerala, Oaxaca's Saturday market, the Buddhas of Borobudur, Ballybunion golf club-all the places guaranteed to give you the shivers.

The prose is gorgeous, seizing on exactly what makes each entry worthy of inclusion. And, following the romance, the nuts and bolts: addresses, phone and fax numbers, web sites, costs, and best times to visit.

Schultz's compilation is a tightly researched work with fascinating trivia about the places he recommends, and there are plenty of places you wouldn't have thought about, and its got pictures to speak for themselves!

Makes for quite a handy gift item too, which is why I bought it initially, but liked it so much I decided to keep it for myself. Delectable!


1000 x 1000 cheers - This is The Best   April 29, 2004
72 out of 82 found this review helpful

How glad I was to have overlooked a scathing criticism or two re the author's would-be emphasis on expensive hotels only - were we reading the same book???? What planet do these people live on?? The beauty of this book is that it covers every category or travel destination imagineable - from events to museums, bars to national parks, annual festivals to ancient temples. Are there hotels? Let's hope so, because the author's choice in every other category is so on the dime, you can be sure she has singled out all of the world's best hotels too. Are they expensive? Most are, yes - but where else do you intend to go for your once-in-a-lifetime trip to celebrate a honeymoon, a promotion, an anniversary or your mother's 80th birthday??? Still too expensive? Then go and sit in the lobby, wander the impeccable grounds, take in the white-gloved service with a smile and get a glimpse of the good life and make believe if only for a few hours....then explore the hundreds of other options that will fit a leaner budget and keep you mighty busy and awefully happy for years.
The book blew me away - and I thought I had been around the block.


Kudos - A Job Remarkably Done   February 13, 2004
87 out of 100 found this review helpful

I have been professionally traveling for 35 years and for personal reasons twice that. Yes this 900-page travel bible features a lot of (historical, must-see and unusual) hotels, but there are so very many more museums (the world's biggest and best and the small gems too), festivals (a betrothal festival in in Morocco's Atlas Mountains and the Spoleto Festivals in both Spoleto, Italy and Charleston USA), food experiences (the Maine Lobster Festival and George Blanc in France) and sites of natural beauty (the Grand Tetons, Patagonia, Cappodocia in Turkey, Italy's Dolomite Mountains, Connemara in Ireland) - oh and I could go on and on....as Patricia Schultz does. You can never please everyone all the time, but no one has ever come as close as this intrepid author, and with a lovely and easy to read prose that should awaken the adventurer and explorer in all of us. I gave 20 of these books away as Christmas gifts and now have 20 best friends who are still talking about the best gift they ever received.


Five stars - and then some   March 2, 2004
25 out of 28 found this review helpful

As a professional travel writer of more than 35 years, I marvel that this book can garner such disparate reviews - people love it (5 stars) or hate it (1 star). The latter would do well to read the author's intro where she explains that these are not the only one thousand places to see in this huge and fascinating world of ours. They are the places that make up her own Life List, and in my opinion she is right on the dime. Would these be my one thousand? The truth is - who would ever have the time, passion and experience to draw up such a list to compare? Ms. Schultz has done it for us and she deserves a gold star. This is my trade, and know what a nightmare it is to organize a book one fourth this size, and then include all the info (distances, contacts, best-time-to-go info etc) to get you there. Are we all convinced we could do it better? Ask the one-star reviewers - but let's see them try.


The World Is Our Playground   February 16, 2004
68 out of 83 found this review helpful

Where to go next? Why? When to go? How to get there? The passion and patience the author sustained for the many years it took to compile this travel bible is mind boggling. They are her thousand top picks - not mine and maybe not yours. But no one has ever tried to put it all between two covers and so successfully (in my opinion). Man is a list-making animal - Top Museums, Top Adventures, Top Golf Resorts. But this personal life list tries to be a little bit of everything - everywhere - for all traveling types, and the close-to-thousand pages mix the humble with the magnificent, the fast food with the gastonomic temples, the just plain fun with those magical and spiritual places of the world to be revered. I've been to a great number of these places and the author is right on the mark - and I can only imagine I can expect the same success with those she writes about so beautifully.