Celebrities share their favorite travel destinations in new book

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s is in Trinidad.

Suze Orman’s is on a bench at Crissy Field in San Francisco.

Alex Trebek’s is in England.

And Tony Hillerman’s favorite place on Earth was Shiprock, N.M.

We know this because author and editor Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr. for years has been pestering famous people with a single question, and National Geographic has just published the answers in “My Favorite Place on Earth” ($22.95 paperback).

Dunn brings together 75 answers in the book, some predictable (Lance Burton levitates toward Las Vegas, Ted Danson is partial to Martha’s Vineyard), some not (Tom Brokaw treasures Tibet? Brian Wilson loves London?).

The answers come with firsthand explanations (from a few paragraphs to a few pages), color photos and a few sentences of background on each traveler and each place.

There’s no clear winner in the polling, but the Hawaiian islands turn up three times, and it’s fun to imagine cookie-meister Wally “Famous” Amos, cartoonista Matt Groening and singing surfer Jack Johnson standing in line together for shaved ice on the North Shore.

And for the record, just one source here names Los Angeles as a favorite: Cesar Millan, television’s “Dog Whisperer,” who can’t get enough of Runyon Canyon Park and its 90 off-leash acres.

– Christopher Reynolds, L.A. Times staff writer

[Image: www.myfavoriteplacenatgeo.com]

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 at 7:09 am by Christopher Reynolds and is filed under Africa & Middle East, Asia, California, Hawaii, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.