Travel ecstasy

I spent four years on the road, staying in more than 200 budget hotels from Berlin to Bali, and took photos of my rooms before I turned down the covers every night. Along the way, I discovered that travel ecstasy usually increases in inverse proportion to your hotel bill. Cheap Hotels is a quirky memoir of a life lived under hideous bedspreads, a guide to choosing inexpensive hotels that embody the spirit of a place.

Those who fear that travel has become a sterile, globalized experience will enjoy seeing the world through this eclectic parade of rooms from the charming little cottage on a deserted pink sand beach in the Philippines to a closet-sized cubicle on a Venetian canal. This book will delight and tickle travelers, armchair and otherwise, who have found (or imagined) themselves swinging in a hammock on a slow boat down the Amazon, or sleeping in a $28 motel room in the South Pacific.

-Daisann McLane