101 Places Not to See Before You Die

by Price, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780061787768
• ISBN10: 0061787760
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-22
• Publisher: Perennial

Summary

Because bad places make good storiesThe Testicle Festival, Garbage City, Rush Hour on a Samoan Bus, our Boss's Bedroom, Stonehenge, The Road of Death, A North Korean Gulag, Fucking, Austria, And 92 More! From the Grover Cleveland Service Area to the Beijing Museum of Tap Water to, of course, Euro Disney, 101 Places Not to See Before You Die brings you lively tales of the most ill-conceived museums, worst theme parks, and grossest Superfund sites that you'll ever have the pleasure of not visiting. Journalist Catherine Price travels the globe for stories of misadventure to which any seasoned traveler can relate - including guest entries from writers such as Nicholas Kristof, Mary Roach, Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and A. J. Jacobs-and along the way she discovers that the worst experiences are often the ones we'll never forget.

Author Biography

Catherine Price is an avid traveler and writer who hopes never to see a body farm firsthand. Coauthor of The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook and a contributing editor at Popular Science, she has written for the New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, Salon, Slate, and The Best American Science Writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
The Testicle Festival	p. 1
An Underpass in Connaught Circle, New Delhi, at the Moment When Someone Puts a Turd on Your Shoe	p. 3
Euro Disney	p. 5
Ibiza on a Family Vacation	p. 8
The Beijing Museum of Tap Water	p. 10
A Bathtub Filled with Beer	p. 12
An Overnight Train in China on the First Day of Your First Period	p. 14
Grandpa and Grandma, Koh Samui, Thailand	p. 18
The Winchester Mystery House	p. 20
Guest Entry: The Worst Places in the Encyclopedia	p. 23
Hell	p. 25
A Buzkashi Match	p. 27
Your Boss's Bedroom	p. 29
An Overnight Stay at a Korean Temple	p. 30
Pamplona, from the Perspective of a Bull	p. 34
The Gloucester Cheese Rolling Competition	p. 37
Guest Entry: The Worst Meal in Barcelona	p. 39
Wall Drug	p. 42
Bart	p. 45
A Stop on Carry Nation's Hatchetation Tour	p. 47
The Third Infiltration Tunnel at the DMZ	p. 49
Rush Hour on a Samoan Bus	p. 52
Guest Entry: The Tupperware Museum	p. 54
An Outdoor Wedding During the 2021 Emergence of the Great Eastern Cicada Brood	p. 55
(Tr)Action Park	p. 58
A Giant Room Filled with Human Crap	p. 60
Kingman Reef	p. 62
Naked Sushi	p. 65
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument	p. 67
Times Square on New Year's Eve	p. 69
The Double Black Diamond Run at Powderhouse Hill	p. 72
The Double Black Diamond Run at Corbet's Couloir	p. 74
The Beast	p. 76
The Grover Cleveland Service Area	p. 78
The Room Where Spam Subject Lines Are Created	p. 80
Anywhere Written About	p. 82
Guest Entry: Experiences That Nick Kristof Does Not Think Are Worth Having Before You Die	p. 84
The Tokyo Summerland Wave Pool, August 14, 2007, 3 P.M.	p. 85
Mid-January in Whittier, Alaska	p. 87
Onondaga Lake	p. 90
Mount Rushmore	p. 92
Amateur Night at a Shooting Range	p. 94
Ciudad Juárez	p. 96
The World's Skinniest Buildings	p. 98
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch	p. 100
Guest Entry: The Customs Office at the Buenos Aires Airport	p. 102
Any Hotel That Used to Be a Prison	p. 105
The Top of Mount Washington in a Snowstorm	p. 107
The Bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole	p. 109
The Inside of a dB Drag Racer During Competition	p. 111
Shangri-La	p. 113
Body Farms	p. 115
An AA Meeting When You're Drunk	p. 117
Jupiter's Worst Moon	p. 118
Guest Entry: Splitting the Czech	p. 120
Picher, Oklahoma	p. 121
Tierra Santa Theme Park	p. 123
A Vomitorium	p. 126
Medinat al-Fayoum, Egypt, Accompanied by Your Own Security Detail	p. 128
The Steam Room at the Russian & Turkish Baths	p. 130
The Blarney Stone	p. 132
Guest Entry: Mexico City on the First Day of the Swine Flu Outbreak	p. 134
The Wiener's Circle	p. 137
The Top of Mount Everest	p. 139
Garbage City	p. 140
Stonehenge	p. 142
The Khewra Salt Mines Mosque	p. 144
Anywhere on a Yamaha Rhino	p. 146
Chacabuco, Chile	p. 148
The New South China Mall	p. 150
Guest Entry: Sumqayit, Azerbaijan	p. 152
An Island off Germany's East Coast, January 16, 1362	p. 153
Fucking, Austria	p. 155
The White Shark Café While Dressed as an Elephant Seal	p. 157
The Sidewalk Outside the Roman Coliseum During the Crazy Gladiator's Shift	p. 159
Any Place Whose Primary Claim to Fame Is a Large Fiberglass Thing	p. 161
The Path of an Advancing Column of Driver Ants	p. 163
The Road of Death	p. 165
Guest Entry: Adventure of the Beagle, the Musical	p. 168
Cusco, If You Are Albino	p. 171
Manneken Pis	p. 172
An Old Firm Derby While Wearing the Wrong Color T-Shirt	p. 174
The Annual Poison Oak Show	p. 176
The Inside of a Chinese Coal Mine	p. 178
The Seattle Gum Wall	p. 180
Varrigan City	p. 182
The Inner Workings of a Rendering Plant	p. 184
An Airplane After It Has Been Stranded on the Runway for Eight Hours	p. 186
The Amsterdam Sexmuseum	p. 188
The Next Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano	p. 190
The Shores of Burundi's Lake Tanganyika When Gustave Is Hungry	p. 192
Ancient Rome on or Around the Night of July 18, 64 A.D.	p. 194
Nevada	p. 196
Guest Entry: Fan Hours at the Las Vegas Porn Convention	p. 200
The World Bog Snorkelling Championships	p. 202
Your College Campus Four Months After You Graduate	p. 204
A North Korean Gulag	p. 205
Disaster City	p. 207
The Inside of a Spotted Hyena's Birth Canal	p. 209
Gropers' Night on the Tokyo Subway	p. 211
The Yucatán Peninsula When a Giant Asteroid Hit the Earth	p. 213
Monday Morning at the DMV	p. 215
Black Rock City	p. 217
Guest Entry: Burning Man	p. 220
The Bottom of a Pig Lagoon	p. 221
Sohra, India, 10 A.M., During Rainy Season	p. 223
The Thing	p. 224
Four Corners	p. 226
Russia's Prison OE-256/5	p. 228
A Bikram Yoga Studio	p. 230
The Traveling Mummies of Guanajuato	p. 232
The Top of the Stari Grad Bell Tower	p. 234
Acknowledgments	p. 237
Photo Credits	p. 239
Index	p. 241
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