All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love & Petty Theft

Some people are meant to travel the globe, to unwrap its secrets and share them with the world. And some people have no sense of direction, are terrified of pigeons, and get motion sickness from tying their shoes. These people are meant to stay home and eat nachos. Geraldine DeRuiter is the latter. But she won't let that stop her. Hilarious, irreverent, and heartfelt, All Over the Place chronicles the years Geraldine spent traveling the world after getting laid off from a job she loved. Those years taught her a great number of things, though the ability to read a map was not one of them. She has only a vague idea of where Russia is, but she now understands her Russian father better than ever before. She learned that what she thought was her mother's functional insanity was actually an equally incurable condition called "being Italian." She learned what it's like to travel the world with someone you already know and love--how that person can help you make sense of things and make far-off places feel like home. She learned about unemployment and brain tumors, lost luggage and lost opportunities, and just getting lost in countless terminals and cabs and hotel lobbies across the globe. And she learned that sometimes you can find yourself exactly where you need to be--even if you aren't quite sure where you are. After getting laid off from her copywriting job, Geraldine DeRuiter hit the road, and began chronicling her travel adventures on her blog, The Everywhereist. Seven years and many, many posts later, the Everywhereist has racked up thousands of fans, millions of page views, and plenty of buzz: it was named one of Time magazine's Top 25 Blogs of the Year, one of Forbes magazine's Top 10 Lifestyle Websites for Women for three consecutive years, The Independent's 50 Best Travel Websites, and The Huffington Post's Top Travel Blogs. Whether it's eating roasted guinea pig in Peru, yelling at locals in Rome, or struggling to decipher the behavior of her fellow passengers ("Why would you use an airplane lavatory without shoes on?"), DeRuiter tackles travel with an equal mix of snark and heart as she hops around the globe with her husband, Rand Fishkin.