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.

I did laugh out loud while reading this amusing & sardonic traveler's tale, reminiscent of Michael Palin's books chronicling his BBC-funded world travels, David Sedaris' language lessons and of course Bill Bryson's comic travelogues. The author follows in the 400-year-old footsteps of the first European Grand Tour - a bit of a dry itinerary but still fun to read, especially if the reader has visited (or plans to visit) some of the stops on Moore's journey. Who wouldn't crack up as Moore describes tourists in Milan "wearing '13 trillion lire for a Coke - is that a lot?' faces?" Enjoyable for anyone who loves travel: the good, the bad & the ugly.

Simply the best, quirkiest, and most amusing travel writing I have read (with apologies to Bill Bryson and Peter Mayle). Amusing travel experiences may be common, but Tim Moore has a unique and enviable ability to catalogue and narrate them in hilarious detail. His research into the Grand Tour memoirs of Coryate and others provides a complementary and edifying dimension. My experience with this book has moved Frost on My Moustache to the top of my reading list.