The 100 best vacations to enrich your life by Pam Grout, book review

Title:

The 100 best vacations to enrich your life
(National Geographic, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4262-0095-3 1-4262-0095-1

Theme:

The 100 best vacations to enrich your life highlights learning experiences like cooking schools and language classes, working vacations including volunteering and building houses, healthy holidays like walking trips and spa wellness vacations, and creative escapes such as photography, writing, dance and sculpture classes.

Sample Items:

In a one-week program at University of Toronto's St. Michael's College, learn about Goethe's Faust, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the Book of Genesis and Iranian cinema. Volunteer to help the Earthwatch Institute excavate Ice Age mammoth remains in South Dakota. Take a tax-deductible vacation to introduce a street kid to the wilderness with the Sierra Club's Inner City Outings programs. Learn the art of wood turning on a week-long workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Take a ten-day hiking and camping trip to Kalalau Beach on the Na Pali Coast, Kauai, Hawaii.

Notable Elements:

The 100 best vacations to enrich your life shows readers how to see and experience local life and culture in deeper, more personal ways. For example, vacation number 99 explains how U.S. Servas arranges homestays for travelers and hosts around the world.

Tone / Style:

The tone is positive, motivational and inspirational.

Short, one- to three-page summaries begin with a quote, describe the location and experience with prices, dates and helpful advice. Vacation descriptions include addresses, phone numbers and websites for the organizations providing the trips. Sidebars cover historical facts, sidetrips and trivia.