Reid Bramblett

Reid Bramblett writes, edits, and illustrates articles, websites, and guidebooks—mostly on travel. He is a specialist in Europe in general, and Italy in particular, as well as the nitty gritty of trip planning, budget travel, adventure and active travel, art and history, and the outdoors.

After spending the first half of his career in New York City, he headed to suburban Philadelphia to raise his own kids in a place where his backyard gives way to a creek, woods, and the farm fields beyond. It’s near where he grew up—if you don’t count ages 11 to 14, when his family lived in Rome, Italy, where his father taught painting at Temple Rome. He doesn’t generally recommend adolescence for anyone, but if you have to go through it, Italy’s a pretty good place.

He returned to Rome for his own junior year abroad in college, where he traveled widely, met the woman he’d eventually marry, and started writing a humor column about his adventures for the school paper back at Cornell University. At the time, he had no idea he had stumbled across his career.

Following an entry-level year editing guidebooks at Simon & Schuster’s Macmillan division, he vaulted to the other side of the desk to write Frommer’s first ever regional guide, to Tuscany & Umbria, and never looked back. He has since authored ten guidebooks — collectively updating them over 24 editions — and contributed to nearly three-dozen others. He has also been a Contributing Editor to Condè Nast's Concierge.com and to Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine, where he was formerly on staff as the Associate Editor. His award-winning ReidsGuides.com trip planning site has been recommended by CNN, USA Today, SmartMoney, and National Geographic Traveler, and was proclaimed "Among the best" by Arthur Frommer. As a daily travel reporter for MSNBC.com in 2002–2003, he won two Lowell Thomas awards from the Society of American Travel Writers.

He has written on travel, food, shopping, and the outdoors for CNN, National Geographic Traveler, MSNBC, The Miami Herald, Bon Appetit, AARP The Magazine, Smart Shopping, and Modern Bride. For years he penned a weekly adventure column, "The Intrepid Traveler,” for the Chicago Daily Herald, St. Petersburg Times, and Tampa Bay Times, and for even more years maintained a weekly blog at—of all things—Weighwatchers.com called “The Man Outdoors” dedicated to an active lifestyle. Speaking of unexpected outlets, he also finally got to use his college degree when he became the official on-camera Cultural Anthropologist for the Travel Channel's "Great Cruises" series.

He is a Smithsonian lecturer on travel and European history, and a regular speaker at the New York Times Travel Show, The Explorers Club, the Philadelphia Travel Show, and the Public Relations Society of America. He has served as a travel expert on CNN, Fox NEWS, CNNfn, and the New York City affiliates of ABC, Fox, and UPN, as well as on various regional NPR stations. He has been the occasional guest co-host of the nationally syndicated radio call-in program "The Travel Show" with the late great Arthur Frommer and Pauline Frommer.