Prepare to get lost on the beaten path

Enough with the road less traveled. This is the story of straight-up, cliché-ridden tourism, a journey firmly on the beaten path and an exploration of how, exactly, the path got so beaten in the first place.

When Doug Mack picked up a 1963 edition of Europe on Five Dollars a Day, he stumbled on an inspired idea: to boldly go where millions have gone before, relying only on the advice of a travel guide that's nearly a half century out-of-date. Add to the mix his mother's much-documented grand tour through Europe in the late 1960s, and the result is a funny and fascinating journey into a new (old) world, and a disarming look at the ways the classic tourist experience has changed- and has not-in the last generation.

After a whirlwind adventure spanning eight countries-and costing way more than five dollars a day-Mack's endearing account is part time travel, part paean to Arthur Frommer's much-loved guide, and a celebration of the modern traveler's grand (and not-so-grand) tour.  Read more ...

1967. It starts here, with

my mother. Hippie Grand

Tourist and letter-writer

extraordinaire.

2009. It leads here. Yours truly, mildly inept traveler, using those letters and that guidebook for my own Not-So-Grand Tour.

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