Abroad at Home: The 600 Best International Travel Experiences in North America

This book offers a unique perspective on travel close to home. Breaking the United States and Canada into six different regions, the perspective traveler is offered “the 600 best international travel experiences in North America.” It includes tourist attractions from sightseeing to local festivals and gives a who’s who of the best local dining at each destination city. Rich in cultural influences of all sizes, new light is shed not only on large cities such as Cincinnati, Ohio; Houston, Texas; and San Diego, California; but also on the lesser-known Paterson, New Jersey; Horse Cave, Kentucky; and Willamette Valley, Oregon.

As a starving college student, California resident, and travel enthusiast, I found this book intriguing.

Like any good travel book, it offers attraction maps, phone numbers, websites, vivid pictures, and lots of tourist hotspots. But this is very much a book of local attractions from different areas. You get a sense of the culture and history of each of the featured cities. Living so close to many of the featured California locations, these are attractions I can—and plan to—turn into day trips, even though I had never considered them before.