During the long Columbus Day weekend I visited the Adventure Travel Expo at the Javits Center in New York City. The main reason for attending the Expo was to go to two Book signings and possibly get a discount for an upcoming trip.

The first book signing was held by Tony Wheeler, the CEO of Lonely Planet, who co-wrote the book “Unlikely Destinations: the Lonely Planet Story” with his wife. I loved reading the story on how Lonely Planet was founded and all the travel epilogues that were included in it.


Before the book signing Tony Wheeler gave an informative talk on his most recent travels and one of his most interesting adventures of 2009 was his attendance at one of the Soyuz space rocket launches in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Apparently it costs about 30 million dollars to be blast into space as a tourist, which Mr. Wheeler regrettably admitted he couldn’t afford. I guess if we just keep buying his world famous travel guide books, he might get there one day and I bet we might see a Lonely Planet - Space in some distant future.

The other popular world traveler to speak at the Expo was Patricia Schultz, who put together the book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.” This book contains the most amazing places and events to see on each continent and is almost 1,000 pages long.
Patricia Schultz, who is of Italian ancestry, admitted her favorite country in the world is Italy, but she obviously loves many places around the world. She has personally been to about 80% of all the places that are listed in her book. I think I have quite some catching up to do!

After her slideshow presentation, which included spectacular photos, I just wanted to run out of the place and head straight for the airport. However, I managed to restrain myself and had her autograph my copy of her book and then proceeded to negotiate a nice discount for a 15-day tour in Mexico with Gap Adventures. It looks like I will be able to tick off some more of Patricia’s favorite places very soon.

More information:
http://www.adventureexpo.com/
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
http://www.1000beforeyoudie.com/