New York Times, 36 Hours: Europe

(Re)discovering Europe. Dream weekends with practical itineraries from Paris to Perm. Culture, history, natural beauty, fine cuisine, artistic masterpieces, cutting-edge architecture and style - Europe overflows with so many riches that a lifetime seems too short to appreciate them. But with the right guidance, you can go far in a single weekend. Stylishly written and carefully researched, this updated and expanded collection of the popular "New York Times" "36 Hours" feature offers you 125 well-crafted itineraries for quick but memorable European trips, accompanied by hundreds of color photographs to fire your imagination. You can explore the expected: the Renaissance in Florence, surfing in Biarritz, flamenco in Seville. And discover the unexpected: Sicilian mummies dressed in their Sunday best, a dry-land toboggan ride on Madeira, a hotel in Tallinn with a KGB spies' nest on the penthouse floor. Your guides are seasoned "New York Times" journalists and savvy travel writers. Elaine Sciolino, a longtime foreign correspondent, offers three tours of Paris and a side trip in southern France.

Frank Bruni, the "Times" op-ed columnist and food writer, advises on pizza and priceless art in Rome. Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler, takes you to a gorgeous beach in Poland. With the peripatetic author Tony Perrottet, follow the footsteps of Lord Byron and the Shelleys around Lake Geneva. And Seth Sherwood, one of America's liveliest and most prolific travel writers, lays out a dozen weekends from Copenhagen to St.Tropez. World capitals, ancient nations that once ruled wide domains, tiny countries with big personalities - it's all Europe, and all fun to read about (whether you actually go or not) in this handsomely designed and illustrated book.

It features: 4,500 hours worth of insightful itineraries to make the most of your stay; 125 European destinations, from major cities to lesser known gems; practical recommendations for over 500 restaurants and 400 hotels; color-coded tabs and ribbons to bookmark your favorite cities in each region; nearly 800 photos, most of them from "The New York Times" archive; all stories have been updated and adapted for this volume by Barbara Ireland, a veteran "Times" travel editor; new illustrations by "Times" illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli of Milan; easy-to-reference indexes; and detailed city-by-city maps pinpoint every stop on your itinerary. Also available: "36 Hours: 150 Weekends in the USA & Canada".