Don't Go There! the Travel Detective's Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World

Vacation season is coming and we all hope our vacations will be flawless excursions that help us relax and leave us with fond memories. We can hope, but our dream vacations can turn into nightmares because of filthy hotels, incompetent airlines, disease-ridden cruise ships, and destinations where you stand a better than average chance of being murdered for your shoes.  Peter Greenberg, who is the travel writer for the Today show, tries to help the reader escape some of these tourist traps by listing his picks on such topics as “Worst Hotels: Paging Norman Bates”; “Worst Cruises: Ships of Fools”; and “Highways of Death: God’s Not Your Copilot.” Everyone who has traveled extensively is bound to have war stories, but you could literally wind up in a war zone in “Dangerous Destinations: You’d Better Pack More Than Samsonite.” One of Greenberg’s most hair-raising accounts is of the person who discovered a dead body under the bed in a hotel room. Through most of this book I was torn between dismay and hilarity and while I resolved never to visit some of these locations and hotels, I thought a lot of his advice would have to be taken as a cautionary text and it would be up to me to do more research on my own if I were thinking of traveling to some of his “Dangerous Destinations”---one of which is Birmingham, Alabama. Still, Greenberg’s book could be an excellent starting point for where not to take a vacation. So read closely, plan carefully, and happy vacationing!




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