Womens Travel Memoirs

Rattled by fears, that she is losing not just keys, but her job, looks - even a sweetheart - Gail rashly announces that she will go alone to Paris, a dream postponed for 40 years. So begins the journey through France of an optimistic, infinitely curious, 62 year woman, who seeks to ransom her self-confidence and learn how to age. Deftly weaving scenic description with sketches of feisty Frenchwomen and flashbacks of older women she has admired, Gail draws wisdom from people and places that have gracefully endured the passing years.

America the Beautiful? is a hilarious trip into the mind of one of the Millennial generation’s funniest writers. Borrowing her Midwestern stepfather’s Prius, she heads west to the Loop of mega-popular parks, over to the ocean and down the Pacific Coast Highway, and, in a feat of spectacularly bad timing, through the southwestern desert in the middle of July. Along the way she meets new friends on their own personal quests, learns to cope with abstinence while missing the comforts of home.

Laura Kasinof studied Arabic in college and moved to Yemen a few years later - after a friend at a late-night party in Washington, DC, recommended the country as a good place to work as a freelance journalist. When she first moved to Sanaa in 2009, she was the only American reporter based in the country. She quickly fell in love with Yemen’s people and culture, in addition to finding herself the star of a local TV soap opera.

When Romi Grossberg decided, at thirty-five, to give up her job as a social worker in Australia for a two-year contract in the slums of Cambodia, she could never have imagined that the experience would change her life forever. Hip Hop & Hope is part memoir, part history, part travelogue, and completely engaging. Its portrait of Phnom Penh is complicated and indelible. Its story of work in an NGO is inspirational. At this hip hop youth centre, Romi evolves from a frightened burrung to a respected manager who knows the words, the tunes, and the moves.

Jackie was an ordinary American woman whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.

Shaken by the loss of her father, drained by her job at the United Nations, and conflicted over failed relationships, Natasha Scripture asked herself the question at the heart of her anxiety: What is my purpose? The answer was not about finding love; it was about recognizing its source. The result is Man Fast, a true and intimate spiritual detective story. With courage, honesty, and wit, Natasha shares the story of her awakening.

As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later, Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness.

In February 2008 a casual afternoon of ice skating derailed the trip of a lifetime. Mary Morris was on the verge of a well-earned sabbatical, but instead she endured three months in a wheelchair, two surgeries, and extensive rehabilitation. On Easter Sunday, when she was supposed to be in Morocco, Morris was instead lying on the sofa reading Death in Venice, casting her eyes over these words again and again: "He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers." Disaster shifted to possibility and Morris made a decision.

Atop a hill in the rainforest of Belize, next to the ruins of a fallen civilization, a butterfly farm raises the brilliant blue morpho. What starts out as the worst vacation ever turns into a quest to learn more about the first-of-its-kind farm when journalist Diana Marcum inadvertently discovers this wildlife sanctuary, which is supported by an international live-butterfly trade.

Have you ever been at a point in your life where technically there’s nothing wrong, exactly… yet somehow things aren’t quite right? The drumbeat of discontent starts getting imperceptibly louder and louder until one day you just can’t ignore it any longer… That was me, a few years back. My solution? To completely walk out of my life into the unknown… Part of that unknown was a life-changing road trip through Spain in a campervan, on my own. Things didn’t go entirely to plan, but then that’s all part and parcel of life’s journey.

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin and Tolstoy, among others - Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Wheeler follows local guides; boards with families in modest homestays; eats roe, pelmeni, and cabbage soup; invokes recipes from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking; learns the language; and observes the pattern of outcry and silence that characterizes life under Vladimir Putin.

This audiobook is about living as a young white woman with a tribe in pre-independence Papua New Guinea where the tribe had limited European contact but welcomed me to share their village life, customs, travels by outrigger canoe, and ceremonies. Their coastal language was only spoken within a small radius, with each tribe having its own totems and traditions. The story tells of a Romeo and Juliet-style suicide tragedy, but also highlights the joys....

When Susan quit her job in London and set sail off the south coast of England on her beloved sailboat, Isean, she was unaware this spontaneous departure would lead to a three-year journey spanning several countries across the continent. With only the very basics on board, resourcefulness becomes an unexpected source of joy and contentment. But for all the physical and navigational challenges of her journey, the other side of her story reveals a more important change - an inner journey - that took place along the way.

Stephanie White, from Charlotte NC, made up her mind to tackle the three individual 200-mile distance races known as the Triple Crown of 200’s. This includes the Bigfoot 205 mile race, Tahoe 200 mile race, and the Moab 240 mile race. While trying to figure out how to train for these races, she decided to do a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and learned so much about herself and life, in general, along the way.

Named one of Time Magazine International's 30 most important people of 2005, Maud Fontenoy presents us with a terrific, entertaining adventure story on the high seas as she challenges the Pacific Ocean - a feat no woman before her ever accomplished. Already the first woman to row alone across the North Atlantic, Maud raised the bar to defy the elements, the daunting solitude, and the circling sharks of the South Pacific on her second solo voyage.

Is the glass half-empty or half full? Sometimes life influences our view and alters our perception. In 1997, life changing events almost destroyed me. At my lowest point, and just in time, I met Nigel. He helped me to discover how a positive attitude can change everything.In 2008, with good times ahead of us, my glass was half-full. As a family, we made the biggest and most difficult decision of our lives; part of our family would immigrate to Australia. We lived the Australian dream, embracing adventure until adversity came to test us.

At the age of 18, Yvonne set out to build a home from trees on 80 acres she bought on an Oregon mountainside. In 1975, log by log, she creates a cabin and heals from an orphaned past, finding a new family in the forest and with people in a valley named John Day. Babe in the Woods: Self Portrait is the second in a three-book series. It chronicles a span in Yvonne's four decades' long relationship with her log cabin and the people she meets in the valley. The audiobook continues Yvonne's story of learning to live in the wilderness within and outside of herself.

Award-winning memoirist Meg Stafford has an adventurous spirit, and this time she takes us along for the ride. When her daughters venture into terra incognita—one of them meditating in the Himalayas and the other negotiating with the Colombian military—Stafford decides to go too. In the process, she reflects on her own lifetime of wanderlust and what it means for a parent to love and to let go. Generous, insightful, and deeply funny, Stafford is the ideal tour guide for a journey as big as the world and as intimate as the human heart.

A personal story promising laughs, surprises, tears, and joy, and guaranteed to warm your heart! When a grandmother embarked on a two-week travel adventure to Italy with her eighteen-year-old twin granddaughters, Margie Miklas’s long-awaited dream became a reality. Excited to share her beloved Italia, she hoped to create a special experience they’d treasure for the rest of their lives.

This book will give you a lighthearted view of an American who cannot speak or read any Korean but chooses to travel to volunteer and teach English for one month in the city of Gwangju in South Korea. The author returned the following year to volunteer in Seoul, at the Jogyesa Temple. This temple is the headquarters for the largest order of Korean Buddhism, the Jogye Order. Along with her struggles over the language, culture, and lifestyle, the author includes her findings on the achievements of today's South Korea.