Some books just aren't pub books

I showered, dined, had a diverting stroll through town [Spa, Belgium], and repaired to a convivial little bar on the Rue Royals for an evening with Martin Gilbert's grave and monumental history of the Second World War. It is not a pub book, I can tell you now. You read a little and before long you find yourself staring vacantly around you and longing for a conversation.

Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (New York: HarperCollins e-books) (orig. pub. 1993), ch. 6, p. 53.

Bryson loves landing in new cities

Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.

Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (New York: HarperCollins e-books) (orig. pub. 1993), ch. 10, p. 96. (This particular city was Copenhagen. Later in the book, Bryson has arrivals in new cities that are less convivial, due to rotten weather, difficulty finding a hotel, boring streets, or other factors.)