The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter - Softcover

Remarkably, Moore finds that not much has changed since the slightly short man in tights wandered the continent. The city walls and medieval alleys look as if knaves could be lurking close by, while the single-track stone bridges, grand chateaux, and humble villages he sees were ancient even in Coryate's day. Moore is even able to find the places of torture Coryate describes so gleefully, including the unmarked round stone "on which if any banckerupt do sit with his naked buttocks three times in some public assembly, all his debts are ipso-facto remited." Of course, not everything is the same--while there are still picnickers on the roof of Milan's cathedral, there are also mobile phones, and bowling is now considered an art in Italy. Coryate got himself into all sorts of scrapes with his pretentiousness, belligerent arrogance, and eye for the ladies. Moore is equally adept at slapstick, which he tells with self-deprecating humor--playing James Bond at a casino in Baden-Baden, pilfering grapes in homage to Coryate--and he's just as much a cheapskate with his pan-European survey of pizza parlors and MacDonald's bathrooms. In some fantastic fluke of time, Coryate finally found his perfect travel partner in Moore, and the result is a hilarious jaunt through Europe, past and present, that's not to be forgotten or, for that matter, repeated. --Lesley Reed

Tim Moore's writing has appeared in Esquire, the Sunday Times, and the Observer, among other places. He is the author of Frost on My Moustache and French Revolutions.