1,000 Places To See Before You Die
By by Patricia Schultz, 2003

1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz, Workman Publishing, 2003

       You could take Patricia SchultzÕs wildly popular 1,000 Places to See Before You Die a couple of different ways. You could see it as a collection of helpful hints: youÕre a traveler looking for new places to see, and hereÕs a book that offers a thousand suggestions. Or you could see it as a challenge, a massive to-do list: youÕre a traveler, and in order to be considered a real traveler, here are a thousand places you need to see before you die. IÕd guess that Schultz would claim her book is the former, a friendly bunch of helpful travel tips, but itÕs hard not to see it as the latter, especially since the book is subtitled ÒA TravelerÕs Life ListÓ – a reference to a bird watcherÕs Òlife list,Ó a list of all the species a particular birder has seen in his lifetime. The point of the birderÕs life list is to document an ongoing quest to see as many birds as possible (competition between list-makers is inevitable) and itÕs difficult not to think that Schultz is placing before us a similar undertaking: the traveler who dies having seen the most places wins.

       The problem (well, one of the problems) with 1,000 Places is that it is an impossible challenge. The subtitle suggests that the book could be the life list of a particular traveler – perhaps that of the author – but it isnÕt. Schultz hasnÕt seen all the places in the book (she has augmented her own travel experiences with the stories of others and the guidance of other travel guides) and itÕs extremely unlikely that any traveler would be able to check off everything on the list. Money would have to be irrelevant, of course, but even the wealthiest globetrotter would have to devote his every waking moment to the quest in order to complete it. I suppose it could be done, but who is going to do it?

       A bigger problem, though, is the content of the list, which is remarkable – and remarkably flawed – both in what is included and what is omitted. Most of the obvious destinations are here – the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China are on the list – but many places and events that are undeniably worth seeing are missing, and a ridiculous number of places that are mere travel trivia (and which would be uninteresting to a great proportion of travelers) fill out the list.

       Schultz, for example, is an admitted lover of fine hotels, and she is also obviously partial to certain countries. Thus, you get the section on Ireland, one of the worldÕs smaller countries, fleshed out with 32 entries, of which 12 (more than a third, for those who donÕt want to do the math) are hotels. Some of the most impressive sites in Ireland – the Cliffs of Moher, the Burrin, any of the ancient churches in Dublin, even the Guinness brewery or the Jameson distillery, for heavenÕs sake – go unmentioned, but the Assolas Country House, Longueville House, Ballymaloe House, the Shelbourne, the Cashel House Hotel, the Delphi Lodge, the Park Hotel Kenmare, the Sheen Falls Lodge, Adare Manor and the Tinakilly Country House are all considered by Schultz to be hotels that we must see before we die.

       The authorÕs national biases (or maybe just her personal travel experiences) show up pretty clearly, too. Little Ireland does very well for itself by accounting for three percent of the thousand places that must be seen, especially compared to the bigger countries of the world. Canada only manages to get 27 places on the list (seven of them hotels), Russia only contributes 11 (its lone hotel a testament to the countryÕs dirth of fancy accommodations), and China only has 17 sites worth visiting (fewer if you disqualify Tibet as being part of China).

       Come to America, and the problem becomes more pronounced. Schultz seems to have felt obligated to include every state in the list, but she also seems to have had a hard time coming up with something worth seeing in all 50 of them. Our own corner of the country fares particularly badly. Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan each only get one site on the list, and presumably that only because every state has to be mentioned; the things you must see in these three states are, respectively, Shipshewana, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and (surprise) the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

       Midwesterners might argue that there are a few more significant things in Indiana (the Indianapolis 500 or Brickyard 400, Brown County, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Madison and the Ohio River, for instance), in Ohio (Cedar Point and Lake Erie, the underground railroad in Cincinnati, the gorges of the south central part of the state), or in Michigan (the wine country and lighthouses of the southwest, the Mackinac Bridge, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore or any of dozens of other wonderful locales on the Great Lakes). But, alas, the dozen hotels of Ireland, not to mention hundreds of sites of limited interest elsewhere, take up lots of precious slots among the thousand. Who but a golf fanatic would consider the American Club in Wisconsin to be of worldwide significance? Schultz considers it to be the only must-see place in the state, rejecting Frank Lloyd WrightÕs Taliesin and a host of interesting museums and natural wonders in its favor.

       The temptation is for a reader to tally up the places from the list that he has seen (IÕve seen 42, a depressingly small number for someone who is, at least, halfway through his life) but itÕs a temptation thatÕs best resisted. I could list a dozen sights IÕve seen in Dublin alone that IÕm very glad I saw, none of them in the book, and I donÕt care a bit if I die without ever having stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel. Travelers who arenÕt interested in keeping score, who just want to get travel ideas, would be better served by picking a place theyÕd like to go and then getting a good comprehensive guide that covers that place. 1,000 Places is, after all, just a compilation of other travel guides, and an extremely abridged and unbalanced one at that.

       Evan Gillespie is a former Fort Wayne resident living in South Bend.

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