There’s a great round-up of travel stories plus book and music reviews in the latest edition of Perceptive Travel Magazine.

Rory MacLean writes about Sun–bathing with Ghosts in Cassadaga. Cassadaga is located in central Florida and while it doesn’t really sound like my kinda place, it’s fun reading about anyway.

Dave Lowe is one a different spiritual trail in Death’s Prediction and Disaster, By Way of Dharmsala.

On a lighter note, Tim Leffel wanders Western Canada Through the Eyes of a Child,  David Lee Drotar checks out Dial–a–Bird, and Bruce Northam explores the Boomerang Hieroglyphics on the Nile.

Plus a great collection of travel book and music reviews…

And don’t forget to enter the newest giveaway as well. This time you have the chance to win one of TEN Perceptive Travel Coolmax moisture wicking t-shirts courtesy of the fine folks at CoolClothingUSA.com. Five will be given away to newsletter subscribers and five to people who are just joining us. If you’re in the latter camp, send the e-mail confirmation of your sign-up (as in a fake address will do you no good) and your mailing address to remarkable [at] perceptivetravel.com. See the box at the top right of this page to sign up. We’ll pick five at random by the end of July.

Happy reading this Independence Day weekend…

Did you read Intelligent Travel’s post about ‘Foodie Museums’?

Their list of food museums around America sounds like just the thing for a food lover such as myself. Except, that is, for the Spam Museum. That’s a food that brings vivid childhood memories that I thought I’d blocked out. Spam was served with salad and mashed potatos every thursday. And every thursday, I tried to find new and creative ways of getting out of eating it. I simply did not like Spam. I still don’t like Spam. So I guess that’s one museum crossed off my food museum list. But not to worry, there are plenty of others out there to discover.

Such as the Jell-O Musuem in Le Roy, New York. Now that’s one food I have great childhood memories of. Or the Ice Cream Capital of the World in Le Mars, Iowa.

But why not look further afield to the rest of the world? There are plenty of food museums to choose from.

Here’s five that caught my eye…

The Museum of Bread Culture in Ulm, Germany.

The National Asparagus and Mushroom Museum in Limberg, Holland.

The National Museum of Pasta in Rome, Italy.

The Martini Museum in Chieri, Italy.

The Cured Ham Museum and Ibérico Pig Interpretation Center in Aracena, Spain.

Traveling around cyberspace this week, I came across two articles that reminded me that there’s a lot of weird out there worth exploring.

The first article, 7 Bizarre Tours You’d Actually Sign Up for … Maybe highlighted some truly interesting tours that you never would have thought existed. For example, how about the Illegal Border Crossing Tour in Mexico, a ‘night-time guided hike and you’ll be chased in the dark, shot at by (fake) police and you may or may not make it under the fence’. Sounds like something the PC police might have a problem with but I’ve just added it to my list of things to do on my road trip next year. (note to self: make sure I pack some old clothes). Other intriguing tours include the Karaoke Ghost Tour of Sydney and the Scandal Tour of Washington DC.

The second article, Top 10 weird attractions around the globe, offers a list of ‘one of a kind’ events and places. From the Cockroach Race in Brisbane, Australia to the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Wine Spa in Hakone, Japan, there’s enough weird here for everyone. If I had to choose one, I’d definitely be heading for the wine spa.

And if that’s not enough weird, just yesterday I was reading a short article in the recent Wanderlust magazine that listed ’sewer tours worth a visit’ ranging from the sewers to Paris to New Dehli.

It sure is a weird, weird world.

One of the things I always do when traveling is check out the local bookstores. Not just the local Borders or Barnes and Noble but also whatever independent bookstores might be around. Last year I discovered the Fieria de Libros - Madrid’s Open Air Book Market and New York City’s Strand Bookstore.

This year I’m looking to discover more bookstores around the world. But because I’m not traveling at the moment, it will have to be via the internet. And so far, I’ve discovered some new and interesting places to add to my ‘bookstore’ list.

The Guardian’s Sean Dobson list of 10 bookshops from around the world has introduced me to Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht, a 800-year-old church converted into a bookstore and El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, another convert, this time from movie theater to bookstore.

The Boston Traveler’s Ten Great Places to Browse Books in Boston includes Brattle Book Shop, a antiquarian bookstore that’s been around since 1825.

Rolf Potts put together a Very Subjective Guide to Bookstores praising Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon and Shakespeare & Company in Paris, France.

The Bookstore Guide, an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe, lists Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal and The Bookàbar Bookshop in Rome as top impressive appearance bookstores.

USAToday’s Nine destination bookstores worth putting on a tourist’s itinerary highlights the Elliott Bay Book Co in Seattle, Washington and the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado.

With recommendations like these, my bookstore list is growing.

Want to add to it?

What’s your favorite non-chain bookstore?

This week’s reading included two articles that featured some of my favorite things - coffee, walking, and writing.

USAToday’s article on 10 great places to take a literary hike had me wishing I could just put on my walking shoes and hit the trail. Created by Joni Rendon, author of Novel Destinations, the list highlighted literary places such as Bronte’s Yorkshire Moors, Thoreau’s Walden Pond, and Jack London’s Beauty Ranch Trail.

And then I came across a post at TripHow that focused on current day literary cafes in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as a brief look at the tradition of literary cafes in Europe. Turns out you can get a book, The Grand Literary Cafés of Europe by Noel Riley Fitch, profiling 40 historic literary cafes in Europe (all of which are still in business). Cafes such as Le Procope in Paris that first opened it’s doors in 1686. And Café De Oriente in Madrid where Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca would meet.

Coffee, walking, and writing - sounds like a perfect way to travel.