A closer look
Proving that you can literally romanticize anything if you're bored enough, a 18th-century French aristocrat invented the genre of "room travel" after getting locked up for an illegal duel. Xavier de Maistre was confined to his quarters for 42 days, so he wrote "A Journey Around My Room," a deeply sarcastic travelogue where he treated his bed, armchair, and dog as if they were exotic foreign landscapes. It remains the ultimate introverted masterpiece, successfully mocking the pretentious grand tours of his era without ever putting on pants.
