Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need

Denmark (also called "Norway") is best known as the original home of the prune Danish as well as the Vikings, who wore hats with horns sticking out of them, and for a very good reason: they were insane.

We travel because, no matter how comfortable we are at home, there's a part of us that wants - that needs - to see new vistas, take new tours, obtain new traveler's checks, buy new souvenirs, order new entrees, introduce new bacteria into our intestinal tracts, learn new words for "transfusion," and have all the other travel adventures that make us want to french-kiss our doormats when we finally get home.

Vermont: See New Hampshire

During the warm season (August 8 and 9), Maine is a true "vacation paradise," offering visitors a chance to jump into crystal-clear mountain lakes and see if they can get back out again before their bodily tissue is frozen as solid as a supermarket turkey.

I took an estimated two thousand years of high school French, and when I finally got to France, I discovered that I didn't know one single phrase that was actually useful in a real-life French situation.

But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained and built sod houses, which are actually made of dirt. Think about that. You can't clean a sod house, because it would be gone. The early settlers had a hell of a time getting this through to their children. "You kids stop tracking dirt out of the house!" they'd yell.

Ha ha! We are just poking a little friendly fun at Germany, which is famous for enjoying a good joke, or as the Germans say, "Sprechnehaltenzoltenfussenmachschnitzerkalbenrollen." Here is just one hilarious example of what we are talking about:

First German: "How many Polish people does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Second German: "I don't know! How many?"

First German: "Let's invade Poland and find out!"

Millions of Other Germans: "Okay!"

First of all, let's dispense with this absurd stereotype that the French are rude. The French are not rude. They just happen to hate you.

What Dad means by "see" of course, is "drive past at 67 miles per hour." Dad feels it is a foolish waste of valuable vacation time to get out of the car and actually go look at an attraction.