Travels With Alice

This delightful book collects Calvin Trillin's accounts of his trips to Europe with his wife, Alice, and their two daughters. In Taormina, Sicily, they cheerfully disagree with Mrs. Tweedie's 1904 assertion that the beautiful town "is being spoilt," and skip the Grand Tour in favor of swimming holes, table soccer, and taureaux piscine. In Paris, they spend a day on the Champs-Elys es comparing Freetime's "le Hitburger" to McDonald's Big Mac. In Spain, Trillin wonders whether he will run out of Spanish "the way someone might run out of flour or eggs." Filled with Trillin's characteristic humor, Travels with Alice is the perfect book for summer travelers.

Calvin Trillin is the author of many books, including Family Man (FSG, 1998) and Messages from My Father (FSG, 1996). He writes a weekly column for Time and a weekly poem for The Nation. He lives in New York City.