Hello and congratulations! You have not only found yourself a good book, but a whole community of booklovers dedicated to sharing books with each other and the world at large. I hope you'll stick around a bit and get to know BookCrossing --maybe even make a journal entry on this book. You may choose to remain anonymous or to join (it's free! – if you do join, please consider typing my name – Beebarf – in the referral box). Feel free to read and keep this book, or to pass it on to a friend or even set it free "in the wild" for someone else to find as you did. If you do choose to join and journal, then you can watch the book as it travels - you'll be alerted by email each time someone makes another journal entry. It's all confidential (you're known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your email address), free, and spam-free. Happy reading!

If you're going to mock other people for their attitudes towards the people they meet on their travels, don't describe the people you meet in terms of stereotypes and with faintly derogatory nicknames, otherwise you will lose the sympathy of this reader.

Happy trails, little book! I hope you have an interesting journey!

It was good to see Beebarf and partner in these parts :) Acknowledging the less than favourable review, I think I still may enjoy this...a modern reworking of the 'Grand Tour' to Venice. I am going on a cruise later in the year starting with a few days in Venice(!), this looks like perfect holiday reading I think.

(18/10/12) Despite some early reservations Tim, the modern-day ‘Grand Tourist’, and Thomas [Coryate], the first of his kind, won me over. Sometimes the Timmy and Tommy show grated a bit but in the end Coryate’s story deserved a re-telling with Tim providing his own comic and self-deprecating twist to what would otherwise be a depressing tale. First the potted history; in 1608 Thomas embarks on a journey across Europe to Venice to improve himself and gather some knowledge and experiences to impress a social group that disdained him – a doomed task as in the end he becomes a sad joke figure, earnestly and expensively self-publishing and undertaking a further self-publicising journey to India. Coryate does sometimes come across as a dull bore, but you can’t deny his determination to cover more than 2,000 miles in 5 months, more than half on foot, including crossing the alps and rowing along the Rhine! His journey set the pattern for future grand and not-so-grand tourists, often with a lot less danger, more money and very little self-improvement in mind, the predecessors of the worst kind of modern Brit abroad. Moore tries to follow the route of Coryate’s trip, but not really the spirit or the physical hardship. Oh, and he wears a purple velvet suit and drives a clapped-out old Rolls Royce….why! Last but not least, between the 2 stories, if you persevere, there is some very interesting history and geography! Enjoy :)

I plan to leave this somewhere in Venice, on the last leg of our cruise holiday...for a grand tourist or anyone else to find and enjoy!