Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)’s Reviews > Around the World in 80 Days > Status Update

From the wikipedia page: "Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme." - This was the park that I was allowed a trip to on one birthday, taking a friend. And we rode the now retired Orient Express roller coaster. And I had no idea the park had an Around The World theme.

...on the 13th, Mocha, surrounded by its ruined walls whereon date-trees were growing, was sighted, and on the mountains beyond were espied vast coffee-fields. Passepartout was ravished to behold this celebrated place, and thought that, with its circular walls and dismantled fort, it looked like an immense coffee-cup and saucer.

"You see, a man of sound sense ought not to spend his life jumping from a steamer upon a railway train, and from a railway train upon a steamer again, pretending to make the tour of the world in eighty days!"
-- Poor Passepartout, he is going to be disappointed.

Passepartout's worry:"My gas-burner, which I forgot to turn off, and which is at this moment burning at my expense. I have calculated, monsieur, that I lose two shillings every four and twenty hours, exactly sixpence more than I earn; and you will understand that the longer our journey—"
--This is going to worry me for the rest of the book. It's the kind of thing I worry about when setting off on a trip!

Am thinking more and more that poor Phileas Fogg is a dull sort of traveler (and that Verne is having fun poking at the English): "He sat down quietly to breakfast in his cabin, never once thinking of inspecting the town, being one of those Englishmen who are wont to see foreign countries through the eyes of their domestics."

Mr. Fix: "A magnificent robbery, consul; fifty-five thousand pounds! We don't often have such windfalls. Burglars are getting to be so contemptible nowadays! A fellow gets hung for a handful of shillings!"

Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg.

"A flunkey handed him an uncut Times, which he proceeded to cut with a skill which betrayed familiarity with this delicate operation." - early in newspaper history the pages of some newspapers weren't cut, and readers had to do this themselves. (This was true of books too.) If I was better up on my history I'd know dates. Oddly I can't seem to find a history link...