Dreaming of adventure but unable to leave home?

 Then get yourself a copy of the Traveler’s Tales award winning anthology series The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010: True stories from around the world  to read.

It’s full of fascinating travel tales by interesting women from all walks of life, including Perceptive Travel’s own Alison Stein Wellner with a tale of culinary heat seeking.

In less than 300 pages, this  book takes you to far flung places that most of us only dream of and shares experiences that, in some causes, will have you doubled up laughing and in others, leave you cringing and shaking your head in disbelief.

Discover the hidden magic of Flamenco in Spain, how the perfect wave in New Zealand offers a lesson in love, learn about political activism and human rights in Burma, cultural understanding through language lessons in Vietnam, and why some people just have to find the hottest food ever.

There’s romance, high adventure, misadventure, spiritual growth, exotic cuisine, with plenty of  humility, humanity, and hilarity thrown in.

And along the way, each of the writers have discovered not only new place and faces, but also a new understanding and awareness of the self within the bigger world.

It’s designed to be read one essay at a time. But odds are, once you pick it up and start reading, you’ll become too engrossed to put it down until the end. And when you finish, you’ll be left wanting more.

Mostly, you’ll be wanting to take off on an adventure of your own.

“Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia –  and possibly Montengero and Albania.”  That was the answer that Bruce Northam gave when I asked him where he was going next. And that answer only covered July.

Northam has spent many years as a travel writer,  and now, in addition to his writing work, hosts the travel video series American Detour.com. He’s the author of Globetrotter Dogma (New World Library, 2002), and has contributed to National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times, Newsday and many others. For the June 2010 issue of Perceptive Travel, he wrote Ethiopia: Birthplace of a Traveler — and Then Some.

Alison Stein Wellner: What made you decide to go to Ethiopia?

Bruce Northam: I was shooting episodes of American Detour, and our sponsor set it up. But Ethiopia was totally mind blowing. I had no idea how blown away I was going to be.

I’ve had my mind blown a lot,  in traveling to about 120 countries. Visually, the most incredible thing I’d ever seen was Antarctica — it was mind-blowingly beautiful, rugged and alive for only a few months a year.  People-wise, I went to China in ’87 and it was truly like being an alien over there. Nothing had really topped India for me, that was like holy cow am I on drugs or am I really seeing what I’m seeing right now, such extremes of poverty and everything.

Ethiopia got me tripping again like that. I’ve been to other parts of Africa before. In the southern part, it’s more about the animals — and yes, seeing  lions and giraffes is mind-blowing, but people-wise, the religious dedication there in Ethiopia… I’ve been in Jerusalem, that’s mind-blowing, but it’s even more mind-blowing in Ethiopia. The history goes so deep, it’s like being in the Jesus era.  I did not expect that.

“Even atheists will be astounded by the sacred, musical dedication here—an epoch soundtrack loop fills the air in every church. In Aksum’s enormous yet intimate St. Marry Church, men and women clad from head to toe in white shawls sang “The Promise” while bowing repetitively in the glimmer from epic stained glass.” — From Birthplace of a Traveler

ASW: What did you expect that Ethiopia would be like, before you went?

BN: I expected all that comes with most of Africa, poverty balanced by kind, smiling people who take nothing for granted… I just didn’t expect it, in certain areas, to be in such a surreal 1AD setting.

ASW: And when did you start writing on Birthplace of a Traveler?

BN: On that trip, I was with laptop, so each night I was putting in notes, I was taking notes.

Every trip I take in the last twenty years, I take fewer pictures and fewer notes. I’ve gotten better at writing down trigger words, instead of just a lot of blah blah blah blah.

I wrote half the story on the road, and the other half when I came back to New York. I roughed it in, and when I got home, I polished.  And that’s typical.

ASW: Did you look at the video footage that you shot when you were writing this piece?

BN: I sometimes do, but in this case, no.

ASW: And where do you write, when you’re at home?

BN: I write in my living room, in front of a large window that overlooks Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the whole span of the Williamsburg Bridge and the turn of the East River.

ASW: You’ve worked for so many years in print, how is it different working for video?

BN: I’ve been going on travel writing assignments for twenty years, and that’s easy for me, but going with a camera man, strategizing about the shots, producing, doing stand-ups and then coming back and writing the story and the voice over? It’s much harder and it’s also more fun. I’m conditioned to being alone a lot out there, but working for the camera, for a visual medium — it has enlivened my writing.

They started with a wing and a prayer, a few dollars in the bank, and a big idea: find a way to celebrate Irish culture in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city known for its German heritage since the 1840s. Their idea worked. This year, as the Milwaukee Irish Fest marks its thirtieth anniversary August 19 through 22, well more than one hundred thousand people will come along to join the celebration. Over the years, the festival has become recognized as one of the top Irish cultural and music events not only in the United States but across the world.

“We’re hoping for good weather, that’s always at the top of the list,” said festival founder Ed Ward, who has been with the festival from the first days. He knows, though that people come out, rain or shine. Musician Aoife Clancy, who has appeared at the fest several times, recalls one year when it poured buckets. “The people still came out. They came out, and they stayed,” she said. “I was amazed.”

People come from all over the United States, and beyond, to explore Irish culture through music, food, arts, language, and story telling. “You could spend a whole day in the cultural village and fill your time up, and never even make it to the music stages,” Ward says. You could, for example, learn about the Celtic Canines, plan a trip to Ireland, talk with a lace maker and a woodcarver, and take in a play in Irish.

Music is really at the heart of things, though. This year, Cherish the Ladies will return to the festival stages. In 2007, the festival was the site for a reunion concert of the all woman Irish and Irish American band featuring many former band members, including Aoife Clancy and Cathie Ryan, who’ve since gone on to top notch solo careers. Another super group of sorts, Greenfields of America, will be on the program this year as well, with members including singer and banjoist Mick Moloney, guitarist John Doyle, and fiddler Athena Tergis.

Tommy Sands, songwriter and peace activist from County Down in Northern Ireland, will be retuning. to the festival. “We’ve always made it a point to have the festival be about the island of Ireland,” Ward said, and this year many artists from the north will be there, including well known songwriter Kieran Goss, whose most recent album was produced by an equally well known American songwriter, Rodney Crowell.

The international artists will share stages with many bands and artists from around the midwest, as well. There are big festival stages, and smaller, more intimate venues on the festival grounds, and sometimes sessions break out there after things close down for the night. There will be a mass on Sunday morning, and on Sunday evening, a closing concert. Then fireworks will light up the night sky to send people on their way — until next year.

A thirtysomething couple, possibly new to the neighborhood and definitely new to the bar, stands just inside the door and timidly scans the scene at Palace Café, a dive bar located across the street from McGolrick Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that’s stuck somewhere in time between Kill ‘Em All and The Black Album.

They don’t like what they see, turn around, and walk back out, quietly, quickly, but not before the barback, who’s had a drink or six, takes note of their hasty exit, which he’s taken as a personal affront, like they’ve spit in his face.

“What’s wrong? You don’t like the bar? Fuck you!”

That, friends, is rock ‘n’ roll. Palace Café is the kind of bar where drunks go to drink, and where the preferred drink is a bottle of Budweiser washed down with a cheap shot of whiskey. (“What’ll it be buddy? $3 for the cheap stuff, $5 for everything else.”) It’s the kind of bar where the regulars, like Bud-sucking vampires, come early and stay late, and where the bartenders have probably sucked more beers than you have on any given night.

It’s the kind of bar where the volume is turned down with disapproval when a straggling hipster ironically punches up Elton John or Billy Joel on the jukebox, and is turned up, way up, for Slayer’s “Angel of Death” or Pantera’s “Domination”. You might drink ‘till you puke, but you’re just as likely to drink ‘till you headbang.

You won’t find the common trappings of common metal bars: there are no faded Anthrax and Motorhead and Metallica stickers plastering the walls, nobody playing dress-up in head-to-toe black clothing, and the toilets actually flush. The attitude comes naturally, with little effort.

It comes in the godfathers-of-metal jukebox, in the boxes of Franzia stacked on the bar with miniature American flags sitting on top, in the wrought-iron chandeliers with lightbulb candles that burned out last year and will be replaced next year. It’s in the old guy sitting at the end of the bar, dressed in a white wifebeater and green jogging shorts, wearing flip-flops and nursing a wine glass full of whiskey and a bottle of beer, who shuffles across the floor every 10 minutes to take a piss, then stumbles out of the bathroom to piss in the ears of anybody who’ll listen.

Some places go out of their way to play the part of dive bar; the real ones don’t do anything at all except turn on the lights and let the vampires in.

If you are as tired as I am of keeping spinning plates in the air and beating back the unending email and never getting to the vacuuming/lawnmowing and the danged car has a funny sound all of a sudden and the cat’s sick and the kids keep saying “I’m bored” (WHEN IS SCHOOL STARTING AGAIN?)….

….then take a breather and stare at a nice picture.

Yes, it really is that lovely in Hawaii.

We should get on a plane and go, really.

Do not tempt me.