The Best American Travel Writing 2002 [Paperback]

The Best American Travel Writing 2002 is edited by Frances Mayes, the author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany and the master of “running away to live in the place of one’s dreams” (Los Angeles Times). Giving new life to armchair travel for 2002 are David Sedaris on God and airports, Kate Wheeler on a most dangerous Bolivian festival, André Aciman on the eternal pleasures of Rome, and many more.

The Best American Travel Writing 2002 is edited by Frances Mayes, the author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany and the master of “running away to live in the place of one’s dreams” (Los Angeles Times). Giving new life to armchair travel for 2002 are David Sedaris on God and airports, Kate Wheeler on a most dangerous Bolivian festival, André Aciman on the eternal pleasures of Rome, and many more.

It's a captivating literary anthology that can be enjoyed on location or in the oft-mentioned armchair. Publishers Weekly

Foreword

I traveled to Helsinki for the first time several Novembers ago. It probably won’t surprise anyone when I report that Helsinki in November was brutally cold with a wind that whipped across the half-frozen harbor, that the sun didn’t rise until midmorning and quickly set by early afternoon, or that it snowed part of every day.
I wandered around the city’s snowy, quiet streets without purpose, following signs I could not read. I haggled with a Russian fur vendor over a muskrat hat in the market square. I drank coffee while sitting on boxes inside a tent near the fish vendors. I whiled away a dark afternoon at a tiny table in Café Engel, looking out across the stark Senate Square, warmed by sun lamps that the barista told me had been set up to counteract “the winter blahs.” I ate reindeer served with cloudberries and lingonberries, dropped markkas into the cup of a blind accordion player, and listened to pl“.