I had a chance to attend a few seminars at the NY Times Travel Show on March 4. (I wrote a little about my visit here)

The first seminar I went to was given by Patricia Schultz, author of the book
1,000 Places To see Before You Die. Her talk focused on many of her favorite places to visit, included a slide show with some great photos and mentioned some updates and additions to the book.

Here are some of the things she had to share at the seminar.
Patricia Schultz likes to travel around by train and says it costs a fraction of the price opposed to flying. She spoke quite a bit about Europe, mentioning places like Scotland, London, Paris, Belgium, Scandinavia and Vienna. She loves Paris and said that even Parisians seem to smile these days.

When talking about her favorite destinations, it seemed like a tough answer. She mentioned Bhutan and Africa, but then said that Italy was her favorite. Patricia said “I lived in Italy for five years, how lucky”.

Slide of market in Morocco

A lot of time was devoted to updates and new additions to 1,000 Places To See.
Many of the new additions come from the now sovereign, former Yugoslavian countries. Places of note were Ljubljana, Slovenia which she said is beautiful with Lake Bled making for a nice day trip. Patricia also seemed to really love Croatia, which is the tourist capital of the coastline with over 1,000 islands.

She ended the seminar talking about a couple of African countries- Morocco and Ethiopia.
Morocco is the safest of the Arab countries to visit with no problems from the uprisings last year that affected many places. It is also one of the most interesting for eating purposes.
Patricia said that the world does not know Ethiopia. She called it “one of the Oh My God destinations” and she found lovely people everywhere.

After the seminar I got to speak with Patricia for a few minutes.  She was very friendly and more that willing to share some travel stories. After mentioning that my wife & I would soon be traveling with our (almost 8 week old) son, Patricia had a positive opinion towards traveling with infants. She said that although he would not remember the trips, there would be photos to look at and the memories would be something special for my wife and I. She also told me that as a kid she did not get to travel but had fond memories of trips to Atlantic City with her family.

Why not get my book signed!