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    Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World
    Unavailable
    Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World
    Unavailable
    Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World
    Ebook324 pages4 hours

    Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World

    By Dina Bennett

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A Publishers Weekly Top-10 Travel Book: A couple embarks on an auto race, and whether it’s the antique car or the marriage, something’s bound to break down…
     
    Dina Bennett nicknamed her restored 1940 Cadillac LaSalle “Roxanne.” In the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, it was known as Car 84, one of 125 classic cars competing in a breathtaking antique auto race. And so Dina embarked from China’s Great Wall with, at the very least, enthusiasm and a roomy front seat. It doesn’t matter that she’s the least likely navigator on any continent, or that she’s a daydreamer prone to carsickness, or that inside she’s riddled with self-doubt. Because behind the wheel is Bernard, her mechanically inclined, thrill-seeking perfectionist of a husband. Besides, the race is only eight thousand miles. What could possibly go wrong?

    As Dina and Bernard nurse Roxanne across the Gobi, Siberia, and the Baltic states and south to Paris, Dina wrestles with nuts and bolts, dodges rock-throwing Mongolians, endures a sandstorm facial, and locks horns with Russians seemingly left over from Stalin’s Intourist era. Yet never once does Dina abandon the absurd hope that she can turn herself into a person of courage and patience.
     
    Funny, self-deprecating, and marred by only a few acts of great fortitude, Peking to Paris is first and foremost a voyage of renewal. It’s for every woman who’s ever doubted herself, and for any man who wanted to join her on that road to re-discovery, albeit off the beaten tourist path. All in all “a fun ride, worth the trip” (Kirkus Reviews).
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 1, 2013
    ISBN9781626362529
    Unavailable
    Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World
    Author

    Dina Bennett

    Dina Bennett was born in Manhattan. After five years as a PR executive, she joined her husband’s software localization company as senior VP of sales and marketing. The two worked side by side until they sold the firm in 1998 and abandoned corporate life for a hay and cattle ranch. Since then she has untangled herself from barbed wire just long enough to get into even worse trouble in old cars on over 100,000 miles of far-off roads. She is the author of Peking to Paris, and she resides in France.

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    Reviews for Peking to Paris

    3/5

    39 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Peking to Paris was fun to read. It was a journey not only geographically, but for the author as well - how the author and her husband drive through China, Mongolia, Russia, etc to get to Paris and how she grows and learns things about herself as well. But that's what trips are all about - the journey, right?!
    • 4/5
      Fascinating story! The author is obviosly a novice, but the story is compelling. I would love to see more by her about the traveling she's done since the rally.
    • 4/5
      Let's preface, I received this book in return for an honest review. I considered it a good read, but less of a travelogue and more human interest. This is a real account of an actual event, as remembered by the author.I was immediately involved by the simple fact that I also have motion sickness in vehicles unless I am driving, so I understood Dina's trepidation at the start of the trip very well.Without giving away too much about the rally itself, I no longer have any desire to own a vintage automobile. Dina is the navigator and first person narrator, and her husband Bernard the driver and mechanic. As the reader, you will really feel like you are along in the backseat on this roadtrip. I do wish they would have had the chance to see more of the places they travelled through, and it sounds as if they did so on future expeditions.I and my husband have enjoyed (endured) a number of road trips, but I doubt our own relationship would have survived this one. They came out the other end much stronger, IMO.I am happy that I read most of the book, then returned from my own life-changing adventure to finish the last third. It brought everything full circle in that it is what we bring back from our own experiences that makes such a trip so important to us all.
    • 1/5
      This book is like its cover: not what it looks like. The cover shows a young woman in a tulle skirt bent over the open trunk of a white 1954 Cadillac filled with matching pink and mauve luggage. The book's author is a 50-plus MBA businesswoman and rancher, probably more comfortable in boots and denims than a tulle dress. Besides, who would wear tulle on a 7,500 trip in an aqua 1940 La Salle 2-door coupe without air conditioning?Oh, yes. If you're a car or rally buff, forget it. Very little here about driving cars or driving rallies. Lots here that sounds like an insecure and self-concerned 14-year-old. Much whining, little wheeling. Half the book is gone and the drive still has 6,000 miles to go. The author tries to keep things light. Too hard and too light. She does not sound like the person who forged a successful professional career, built a business, and ran a ranch. The last several chapters sound more like a real person speaking, as she discovers she enjoys (and can afford) long-distance car treks. Since the journey described in the book, she and her husband have driven Burma, India, Patagonia, much of Africa, with plans for more.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed some of the tidbits about each place visited. The book has a feel of how it would be to ride through all these exotic locales and not really spend much time in each space. That said, it would have been nice to have her husbands voice in the pages more - a masculine voice that spoke of car details and the challenge of driving all those miles. I can't really put my finger on it - the book lives up to its title, but it doesn't have that filling feeling, that feeling of depth. More like an expanded travel journal letting the world what a hoot they had since they had the disposable income and time.
    • 2/5
      This was a quick, easy read without a lot of substance about a husband and wife driving in a rally in an old car that has bad shocks. The narrator whisks us through the rally, introducing us to some characters but no relationships ever really develop and then they go home.
    • 5/5
      I'm not sure if I'll ever drive from Beijing (Peking) to Paris, but now I want to. Dina Bennett chronicles the joys and tensions of being shut in an antique car for upwards of 7 hours a day during a 35 day road rally that stretched almost 8,000 miles across the width of Eurasia. She writes so convincingly I felt like I was there. One of her disappointments was that on that schedule there wasn't much time to see the sights or meet the locals--other than other rally participants most of the people she interacted with were auto mechanics and their wives--but Dina is still able to give a sense of place for the exotic locations she and her husband passed through on their adventure. She's also open about her self doubts and quirks, so this story is as much about personal growth and the trip's impact on her life and marriage as it is about travel. It's a pleasure to read and I hope Dina writes other books about her continuing exploits--see her website to find out what some of what she's been up to.
    • 1/5
      Despite the book's subtitle, "Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World", this book really covers none of these topics. Rather than a fascinating travel narrative, it is largely a laundry list of complaints and grousing about car repairs from a woman who appears to resent her husband for dragging her on a cross-continental car rally. The writing is overly flowerly, filled with needless descriptions and metaphors which bog down the readability of the story. The author's learned wisdom from this unique cultural journey is summed up in vapid commentary like, "When in doubt, always get a pedicure." Not recommended.
    • 2/5
      I usually LOVE travel stories. Kon-Tiki, Patagonian Express, Marco Polo, and so on. When I got this book I was excited because I thought I would read about foreign places, foreign cultures, get descriptions of new and interesting views and customs... but. Already the cover gave me a sense that it was something wrong with this book - high heels and a woman's butt in a tulle skirt, as a book cover for a car rally across Asia and Europe? The back covers note about that a jar of red nail polish is sometimes the best thing ever, also made me hesitant to read the book, but I started, got through it, and finished it. It is a strange book. It is obviously written by someone with a lot of money, since nowhere in the book money is no object and neither the wife or husband have to work, instead they can travel, ride horses, hunt, and so on. Nice life! Despite this the author spends half the book complaining about her misery - her fear of getting car sick, the horrible cold in Mongolia's nights, the dreary desert views, the broken down parts of the car, and she seems overly concerned about what other people in the rally think about her. For God's sake, if you don't want to be part of a rally, then don't be. Say no! Oh, and if you care about antique cars, this is not the book for you either - there are very few details relating to the cars in the rally. I am sorry to say it, but the author comes through as being spoiled, immature, and unprepared.Talking about unprepared, that is what really got me... you don't accept to be a navigator on a rally like this without even training yourself on a GPS and map reading far in advance. The author uses jokes, self-depreciation, and 'poor-me-but-don't-worry-I-can-get-through-this' to describe her adventures, actions and reactions, and it gets tiresome in the end and doesn't feel like honest writing at all. There is no depth, no thinking and analysing, and it is very much me-me-me... all the time. It is a weird book, and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody that care about real life and real travel. For those of you that like easy-read, superficial, and sometimes funny books, sure, this is a good read, but there are better books in that genre.
    • 3/5
      This is great subject matter, a very cool road race in antique cars from Asia to Europe. And it's reading the details of that that keep me reading, otherwise I might have put the book down early on. Barret's insecurities and superficialities unfortunately shine through, reminiscent of Eat Pray Love, a narcissistic book that annoyed me to no end. Attempts at humor are a bit cliche. It's disappointing to read a travel book where the author has not done more to describe the environs and the people they encounter.
    • 4/5
      What do you do when you marry a man who love automobiles and driving and racing? You go on a road rally, of course. Not just any road rally, mind you, but one that begins in Peking, China and ends in Paris, France. That is exactly what Dina Bennett and her husband Bernard did. This book details the preparation for the race and adds lots of personal stories to help you get to know the author. Once the couple are in Peking and begin the race, each day on the road has its own chapter which is something I liked immensely. There is a section of pictures from the race. I would have preferred to have the pictures on the page where they are actually mentioned, but this was fine. As it was, I kept turning ahead or back to see the picture. I also liked the map on the endpapers and kept turning to see where they were now. I've never been on a road rally race, but now I feel like I know what one might be like.
    • 3/5
      At the onset of this book, the author seems to just wamt to complain about how her life was not in any way going well. She takes on a road trip with her husband, from Peking to Paris. At first she feels inadequate and wonders whether she ihas taken on more than she can handle. But the trip proves to be a growing experience and she gains confidence and finishes the race with her husband despite many barriers. The ending is especially sweet as she and her husband find a new passion in traveling the world togehter.
    • 4/5
      Just heard that they're doing another re-enactment of the P2P rally later this month, so thought I'd like to get this read beforehand. This is a great true story. Seldom do non-fiction writers make a book so interesting, especially when it involves cars and mechanics! But in this case, Dina was totally sympathetic and relatable to me. I’m sure if I ever had such a mechanical husband and such an opportunity, my inner thoughts and demons would have been identical to hers. Imagine buying and refurbishing a 1940 vintage car so you can ship it to China and drive it from there to Paris in a 35-day long road rally. Oh what fun, seeing all the sights, taking a couple day trips into the little towns along the way -- wrong! Road rallies are WORK, and Dina never dreamed her job as navigator to her husband’s driving would actually involve work. The Gobi desert and being detained by authorities in Russia were downright scary times. But toward the end, the couple actually started to enjoy themselves and wondered where their adventures would take them next.I felt a real kinship towards Dina. Her relationship with her husband seemed much like mine, her self-doubt and sense of humor were very familiar. We both have even beaten our carsickness afflictions.
    • 3/5
      Better Dina Bennett than me!Dina and her husband sell their software business, retire to a farm, get bored and decide to join a road rally of antique cars from Beijing to Paris. The rally and all of its stories were a lot of fun to read, the ‘this is a road trip so there must be some self discovery’ was just a distraction for me from the rally. However, I do give her kudos, this was no posh Sunday drive, she put up with much more roughing it then I would want to deal with.