Introduction

Bill Bryson’s story, “The Accidental Tourist,” is a funny account of his travels by plane. As a tourist, he gets himself into hard and embarrassing situations. His personality is all over the place, and he is always in trouble. The story is funny and entertaining because of how often he causes accidents by accident. Bill Bryson keeps telling the story from his point of view.

Summary

The person telling the story thought he was terrible at living in the real world. He couldn’t believe how easy it was for other people to do things that he couldn’t do. He was easy to get mixed up. He often couldn’t find the toilet when he went to the movies. He also forgets the number of his hotel room. He goes to the hotel desk twice or three times a day to ask for the room number.

The narrator and his family spent a week in England over Easter. At Boston’s Logan Airport, he suddenly remembered that he had a British Airways frequent flyer programme discount card. The carry-on bag was where the card was kept. When the main character tried to open his bag, the zipper got stuck. In anger, he pulled the zip tighter. The bag’s zipper broke, and things inside, like a tin of pipe tobacco, magazines, a passport, papers, money and so on, were scattered over a large area. He suddenly realised that the accident had hurt his finger and that it was bleeding. His wife was surprised by how much trouble he had made.

The narrator always had bad luck when he or she was on an aeroplane, which made many other passengers unhappy. When the storyteller bent over to tie his shoelaces on a flight, someone in the seat in front of him pushed his seat back. The back of the narrator’s seat hit him on the head. He had to hold on to the other passenger’s leg to stay in place. On another flight, he spilled soda on the woman next to him.

The flight attendant helped her clean up and gave him another drink. He also hit that woman with the second glass. He had no idea what had happened. When the narrator was writing down his thoughts in a notebook, he once had the worst thing happen on a flight. He would sometimes lick the other end of the pen and talk to a woman sitting next to him. When he went to the toilet after a while, he saw that his pen had leaked ink, which had turned his mouth, teeth, gums and chin navy blue.

The storyteller wanted to be cool (civilised). He wanted to make sure the table was clean and tidy. He didn’t want to get his coat sleeve stuck in the door every time he sat in the car. He didn’t want to get his light trousers dirty by sitting on different things.
When the narrator’s family was served food on the flight, the narrator’s wife told the children to cover their heads with the hoods so that they wouldn’t get dirty from watching their father eat. When he travels alone, the narrator doesn’t eat, drink, or bend over to tie his shoes. He does this to avoid any accidents. He sits still and keeps his hands under him so that they don’t move. He didn’t like sitting like that, but it saved him money on his laundry bills.

The narrator travelled a lot, but he never got his air miles discount. He must travel 100,000 miles a year, but he only had 212 air miles from 23 airlines. Sometimes he forgot to ask for them, and sometimes the airlines did not keep track of them.

Once, the person telling the story was going to Australia, where he would get about a billion air miles. But he can’t get a discount on miles because the clerk told him that his name on the ticket was B Bryson, but his name on the card was W Bryson. So, he doesn’t have any air miles, and he couldn’t go to Bali in first class.