In Search Of Italy's Dolce Vita On A '61 Vespa

Vroom With A View

Peter Moore turns 40 and goes in search of Italy's celebrated dolce vita in the company of a 1960s Vespa.

'Its punning title sets the tone for this off-beat travel book...touched by romance and haunted by the glamour of Sophia Loren, it's a larky, laddish tale of roadside picnics, bad behaviour and attempting to re-enact 'Roman Holiday''

'Moore has the parched dry wit, the solid brass cojones of a true traveller and rare eye for the madness of the wider world'

'Moore is the genuine article, a traveller's traveller...inspirational stuff'

'Haunted by the glamour of Sophia Loren, it's a larky, laddish tale'

'Peter Moore...the Jim Carrey of travel writing, has tapped out another racy travelogue'

'Peter Moore's travel guide may well be the most useful of its genre a traveller - novice or seasoned - could select...Whether you're actually going anywhere or just thinking about it, this book is a hoot'

Peter Moore is an itinerant hobo who is lucky enough to be able to support his insatiable travel habit (he has visited 92 countries so far) through writing. He is the author of The Wrong Way Home, The Full Montezuma, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted (shortlisted for the WHSmith People's Choice Travel 
Book Award), Vroom with a View and the classic alternative travel guide, No Shitting in the Toilet. When he is not on the road, you'll find Peter in either London or Sydney watching 'Neighbours'. Sad, really.

It was the late night Tai Bo fitness commercial warning him that life comes to an end after 40 that prompted Peter Moore to chase a boyhood dream. To go to Italy and seek out its celebrated dolce vita from the back of a Vespa. 
But it couldn't be just any old Vespa. Peter wanted a bike as old as he was and in the same sort of condition: a little rough round the edges, a bit slow in the mornings perhaps, but basically still OK. And it had to have saddle seats. And temperamental electrics. And a little too much chrome. The sort of scooter you'd imagine a sharp-suited, Ray Ban-wearing young Marcello Mastroianni riding. Her name was Sophia. 
From picnicking in the Italian alps and rattling through cobbled hilltop to gate-crashing Frances Mayes's villa and re-enacting 'Roman Holiday', Vroom with a View is as much a romance as a travel adventure. For not only does Peter win the woman of his dreams, he falls for a side of Italy others rarely see. Along with Sophia, of course...

No Shitting In The Toilet

The bestselling alternative travel guide by the author of The Wrong Way Home and Vroom with a View

'Peter Moore is the genuine article, a traveller's traveller'

'This infinitely handy, irreverent bullet-pointed code of conduct (and misconduct) abroad revels in a kind of anti-Wish You Were Here ethos. Expect the worse, then turn to this to find ideas, answers and, best of all, comfort in the sod's law of holiday-going'

'Seasoned travellers will find plenty to relate to in this witty and observant book, especially the gentle&nbsp;dig at some of the more conventional guides'

'It's not a run-of-the-mill travel book, oh no, but a book no traveller can do without'

'Definitely a book to take with you as an accompaniment to a detailed travel guide, or even better, a humorous reminder of your trip when you get back home...well worth a read'&nbsp;

Peter Moore is an itinerant hobo who is lucky enough to be able to support his insatiable travel habit (he has visited 92 countries so far) through writing. His other acclaimed travel books are The Wrong Way Home, The Full Montezuma, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted (shortlisted for the WHSMith People's Choice Travel Book Award) and Vroom with a View. He currently lives in London, but does miss his collection of souvenir plastic snowdomes and Kinder Surprise toys which are in Sydney.

No Shitting In The Toilet is named after a sign Peter Moore saw on the door of the lavatory at Jack's Café in Dali, Yunnan Province, in China. It's a sign that encapsulated his travel philosophy: that things never quite turn out as you expect. You end up in situations that defy logic, rational thought and, quite often, general well-being - and yet you have a brilliant time, not in spite of these situations, but because of them. 
And this is the philosophy behind this book and the reason why&nbsp;it isn't really a normal travel guide. OK, it might look like one in its structure and choice of topics, but in fact it's quite the opposite. Instead of practical hints, it gives you impractical ones (How to avoid jet lag - avoid jets ...) and rather than tell you the best places to stay, it tells you the worst. Instead of celebrating transcendental travel experiences, it revels in the most demeaning ones (On checking the hygiene in restaurants: there are 2 things you don't really want to see in life. The first is your parents having sex. The second is the state of the kitchen in restaurants catering for backpackers.). But in that sense NSITT is more in touch with the way things really are. The world of NSITT is one where you're more likely to find a cockroach on your pillow than a complimentary mint, a world where you take your life in your own hands every time you get on a bus, a world where everything goes wrong, and you still end up loving every minute of it. 
Based on the author's award-winning travel website, NSITT is not only hugely entertaining but also eminently practical, with advice on everything from Backpacking and Souvenirs, to Sex and Romance and Health and Eating (and some words of advice for vegetarians: hope you like rice...).

The Wrong Way Home

A hip, hilarious and highly entertaining travelogue that takes the author on the Sixties hippie trail - from the UK to Australia - without flying.

Peter Moore is an itinerant hobo who is lucky enough to be able to support his insatiable travel habit (he has visited 92 countries on his travels) through writing. He is the author of four acclaimed travel books - The Wrong Way Home, The Full Montezuma, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted (shortlisted for the WHSMith People's Choice Travel Book Award) and Vroom with a View as well as the classic alternative travel guide, No Shitting in the Toilet. When he's not on the road living out of his senselessly overweight backpack, he alternates between London and Sydney with his collection of souvenir plastic snowdomes and Kinder Surprise toys.

When Peter Moore announced he was going to travel from London to his home in Sydney without boarding an aeroplane he was met with a resounding Why? The answer was perversity and a severe case of hippie envy - hippies had the best music, they had the best drugs, they had the best sex. But most of all, they had the best trips. Over the eight months (and twenty-five countries) that followed, Moore retraced the steps of many who had made the overland journey from London to the East circa 1967 with the knowledge that his funds were painfully inadequate and the chances of actually making it through places like the Balkans, Iran and China were, in a word, slim. 
THE WRONG WAY HOME is the hilarious account of this life-enhancing Grand Tour by means of bone-rattling bus rides, furnace-like trains and exorbitantly-priced taxis. Along the way, Moore took in the world's most expensive disco in Albania; the bombed out villages and military checkpoints of Croatia; the opium fields of Laos; student riots in Jakarta, and an all-night beach rave on a small island in southern Thailand. He describes the places - and the people he encountered there - with a mixture of awe, irreverence and self-deprecation. Striking a chord with all those travellers, young and old, who have stood where Moore stood, THE WRONG WAY HOME entertains and alarms those of us who love to read about off-the-beaten-track travel adventures but would never be fool enough to pack our rucksacks and go.

Swahili For The Broken-Hearted

Peter Moore hits the (rather dusty) road to travel from Cape Town to Cairo by any means possible to escape a broken heart...

'Moore captures the spirit of contemporary Africa.&nbsp; Brilliant.'

'Moore has a parched dry wit, the solid brass cojones of a true traveller and a rare eye for the madness of the wider world'

'Relayed with his dryer-than-the-Sahara wit.'

'A first-class guide for armchair travellers everywhere.'

'I defy anyone to keep a straight face through this book.'

Peter Moore is an itinerant hobo who is lucky enough to be able to support his insatiable travel habit (he has visited 92 countries so far) through writing. His other acclaimed travel books are The Wrong Way Home, The Full Montezuma, Vroom with a View and the&nbsp;bestselling alternative travel guide, No Shitting in the Toilet. He currently lives in London, but does miss his collection of souvenir plastic snowdomes and Kinder Surprise toys which are in Sydney.

Question: What do you do when you're dumped by the Girl Next Door? 
Answer: Throw yourself into another madcap adventure and travel from Cape Town to Cairo... 
A week after breaking up with the GND (his travelling companion through Central America) Peter Moore heads off to Africa to lose himself for a while. In the grand tradition of 19th-century scoundrelas, explorers and romantics, Africa strikes him as the ideal place to find solitude and anonymity in the face of a personal crisis. 
What follows is Peter's journey from one end of the Dark Continent to the other. Travelling the fabled Cape Town to Cairo route by any means of transport he can blag (or if he must, pay) his way onto, it's an epic trek that sees our intrepid Antipodean experience everything from the southernmost city in Africa to the Pyramids, vast game parks and thundering falls, cosmopolitan cities and tiny villages as he journeys through the very heart of Africa. And travelling on his own, it's inevitable that Peter falls in with a motley cast of characters and has a myriad misadventures: including coming face to face with a wild Hyena with very bad breath, crossing the treacherous Sani Pass, the highest in Africa, narrowly escaping a riot by hiding in a coffin shop, saving oil-covered Penguins in South Africa, acting as an extra in a WW2 epic, not to mention dodging 20,000 single woman trying to catch the eye of the king of Swaziland during the annual Reed Dance. And then there was the time when he was kicked out of Robert Mugabe's birthday bash at gunpoint...

Peter Moore

Intrepid travel writer Peter Moore recently invited the new love of his life, a.k.a. the girl next door, to join him on a romantic sojourn through Central America. The trip would take them into an area of the world emerging from decades of civil war, an area racked with poverty, disease and natural disasters. Naturally, she jumped at the chance. 
 
Over the next six months they battled hurricanes, mosquitoes, uncooperative border officials and over-sexed Mexican commuters, and along the way they learnt rather more about each other than they really wanted to... From Zapatista rebel heartlands in Mexico to a quiet game of cricket in Jamaica, from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch in Honduras to breathtaking ancient Mayan sites and perfect golden Caribbean beaches, The Full Montezuma chronicles the highs and lows of one couple's journey into the unknown. Written with Moore's wicked sense of humour and his eye for the bizarre, and punctuated by a roll call of annoying habits - map-hogging, over packing, bite-scratching and over-zealous haggling - The Full Montezuma is hilarious, incisive and acutely observed, a cautionary tale for anyone planning to cross a continent with their significant other.

Peter Moore

Books by Peter Moore

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