The Grand Tour : The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time to read.
Review: Tim Moore is a travel-writer wanna-be; a man who desperately wants to write a book but has nothing to write about. The premise of this book showed great promise: drive across continental Europe in an attention-magnet of a car and see what happens. But the writer totally wimps out! At every turn and destination he minimizes the contact the European public has with his Rolls-Royce - out of wimpy fear that the RR hood ornament or hubcaps may be stolen - by leaving it safely at the periphery of the great places he visits and taking public transportation to the city centers. The result is a travel log no more interesting to experience than Aunt Ethel's slide show of her weekend trip to Detroit. The travel writer delights in relating the sometimes funny, sometimes awful, but always interesting things that happen during great adventures. All Moore can do is relate the funny and awful things that happen due to his own chronic incompetence and stupid decisions. Memo to Tim: relating the strange things you experience due to your own idiocy as you watch Europe go by from the driver's seat of a worn out Rolls-Royce isn't adventure writing. It's pathetic. My advise for people interested in reading good travel writing: look to Tim Cahil, Bill Bryson, David Sedaris, Paul Thoreaux, etc.