Paris from the Heart Unboxed

NOTICE: I will give this collection (which is priced at $45.00) to one reader chosen at random from those who comment on this post. American Resident, Over 18. (By  Friday April

Destination: Paris, France

Book: Paris from the Heart: Ultimate Walking Tours to Fun, Fashion and Freedom (November 2010) by Jan Dolphin

This beautiful little collection of travel guidebooks to Paris, Paris From the Heart, has been sitting on my shelf since last fall, when the author, Jan Dolphin, sent it to me. I looked at it from time to time, but didn’t know if I really would write about it, since I don’t generally do guidebooks at A Traveler’s Library.  However, I decided to do yet another France on Friday today and tell you about a very different kind of guide to Paris.

The first way in which this guide is different, is that it has one general and five location-specific, separate, thin, paperback books. I love looking at the package. The author, an interior designer, has assembled this package with true artistic flair. All six books enclosed in a cardboard jacket, sport antique posters, gorgeous photography, and charming hand-drawn maps.

Luxumbourg Garden The Thinkers

When I was looking at guidebooks for my trip to Paris, I bemoaned the fact that they generally are too large to lug around, pull out when you stop for a croissant aux chocolate. (Diversion: I recently learned from Alexandra, hostess at Chez Sven, the green B & B in Cape Cod, that chocolate crosssants originated with a traditional after school snack of a bar of chocolate between two slices of white bread. fin de diversion)

Since I would only be covering a small area of Paris, I only needed in-depth guides to one arrondissement (neighborhood) at a time, so I thought perhaps the Paris from the Heart collection would have served my purpose.
In addition to an Introduction booklet with essentials like packing tips and a little vocabulary, the Paris from the Heart collection covers walking tours of the Left Bank, the Right Bank, a walk along the Seine, Montmarte, and Day Trips–the essentials for a first time trip to Paris, so in theory, you could carry  just the booklets you need for the day.
In reality, while this quirky guide might make an interesting travel companion, it will not substitute for a more detailed guide and accurate maps. Dolphin starts by telling us how she first became enamored with Paris.

The sapphire blue bottle

Evening in Paris perfume newspaper advertisement

Dolphin’s Proustian memory experience begins not with a pastry, but with the aroma of Evening of Paris perfume in its exotic sapphire-blue bottle. (Diversion: As a child, I wanted to buy one of those beautiful blue bottles as a present for my mother every Christmas. And I yearned to be all grown up and glamorous enough to wear a perfume with such a sophisticated ambiance. Although the blue of that bottle has always been my favorite color, I later realized that truly exotic perfumes are not generally available at the drugstore in downtown Killbuck, Ohio. fin de diversion) This initial trip down memory lane, sets the stage for the author’s presentation of her Paris.

The beauty and charm of such an intensely personal guide falls down if you want or need information about something the author has not chosen as HER personal favorite. She loves art, shopping, antique buildings. Her enthusiasm is underscored by liberal use of superlatives and exclamation marks. But she also invites you to create your own journal as you go. Each book leaves many lined blank pages  where you can personalize the book.

I think it would be interesting for a first-time visitor to follow one or more of these suggested routes through Paris, and make liberal notes about the things she saw and experienced. A book gains value when someone writes in it, and what a lovely gift that would be from mother to daughter or granddaughter.

Cobblestone street in Latin Quarter

Anyone who yearns for a romantic Paris will enjoy looking at these beautiful little books. However, if you have your own ideas about what you want to see, or if you like to wander undirected and make your own discoveries, you definitely will need a supplemental guidebook for your travel library.

Photos: Most of the pictures here are from my own trip to Paris, and if you would like to reproduce them, please ask me about rights. The two Evening in Paris pictures are linked to the web pages from which they came.

How do you use a guidebook? Do you want one that gives you a specific route, or one that describes many places so that you can map out your own walk? Personalized guide or more matter of fact? (Some people had already commented before I added the offer to giveaway my collection–they are eligible. See Notice at top of post.)

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

AND, note to winners of our January contest–the books are in the mail.

Book Cover: Atlas of Remote Islands

Destination: The Oceans

Book: The Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will (NEW in English, 2010) by Judith Schalansky

As a writer, artist, and typographer, the perfect job for Judith Schalansky, surely would be to create an Atlas. And she did just that.  An Atlas of Remote Islands wins a place in the traveler’s library as a book of beauty, ingenuity, poetry and even contains some of the statistical facts you expect from a reference book. I will treasure this book, dipping into it whenever I feel the need to flee ordinary places and ordinary books.

Her book won awards in Germany, where people sailed into book stores to buy this instructive yet fanciful look at 50 islands. She explains in her foreword that one book in just about every German household is an Atlas.  And to add to the love affair with maps, consider that she grew up in East Germany under communism, when the government banned travel, but could not stop travel of the imagination–armchair travel.

Judith Schalansky and pages from Remote Islands

Shalansky serves up one page of text and a handsome map of each of the 50 islands. Other than a few facts–location, size, governing country–she doesn’t try to tell us everything about each island, but introduces each with a story of a person who once lived, or tried to live on that island. While based on fact, these stories reside more in fantasy than reality. As Utopias, most of these islands proved to be let downs. If they were uninhabited, there was good reason–too remote, too bereft of flora and fauna, not conducive to farming, no fresh water sources. And yet, humankind must seek out islands just as they must climb mountains–because they are there.

The not-so-remote St. Lucia in the Caribbean

While you may have heard of a few of them, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) for one, most will trip you up on a geography quiz.

Go Nomad published this article which compares the book’s story to the experience of “The World’s Most Traveled Man.”

Britain’s Guardian on line, whose reviews I always love to read, says:

In her foreword, Schalansky describes the act of finger-walking a map as an “erotic gesture”. Cartophiles will know instantly what she means: not that there is a sexual frisson involved in map-reading, but that the distant longing for a landscape is usually far greater than the satisfaction gained by reaching it (eroticism’s essence being anticipation rather than consummation).

I want to thank Penguin, the publisher for providing this book for review.

If you are an island fan, you will also want to read

• Island Story (Okinawa)
• A Poet’s Story of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
• Not Quite Paradise (Sri Lanka)
• Travels to a Pacific Island (Marshall Islands)

And for Map lovers:

• It’s a Weird World
• Strange Maps
• The World and Its People

I took the photo of a St. Lucia beach was taken while I was a guest of the gorgeous East Winds Inn. The beach was right outside my apartment. Not remote, but SO island!

How about you? Share your island stories. What is the most remote or unique island you have ever visited?

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Eiffel Tower at Night

I  have one VERY exciting piece of information to share with you, about a tour company for Independent Travelers–just our speed.

First a few odds and ends:

We’ve launched the France movie marathon on my Netflix account, using many of the recommendations you showered upon us when I proclaimed Amelie the best French movie ever.

1. First up: Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and despite those stars, plus the worthy costar of various Paris locations (about 20 listed in Paris Movie Walks), it was NOT made by Alfred Hitchcock, as I erroneously assumed. Despite a laughably phony background on a float down the Seine, you’ll see some great Paris scenery, and Hepburn and Grant at their charming best.
2. Second: Paris, Je T’Aime. I did not really count, but I believe that movie was mentioned more than any other movie in the comments section of my post on Amelie. Thanks to all of you for the recommendations. We saw parts of Paris we’ll never see in person–and some we probably would just as soon NOT see. (Ken, by the way, has decided he will NOT go to the Tuileries stop on the Metro–and those of you who saw the movie may remember why.)

Brushing up Le Francais.

1. I like the Lonely Planet Phrasebook because it seems easy to find things, and has a good section on food, which always tends to be my main interest in any foreign country. (What? You mean You don’t hide the phrase book under a napkin and surreptitiously look up chaudrée when your waiter isn’t looking?) On the other hand, I’m not sure what use I will make of “Tu es de quel signe?” “What is your sign?” or the more direct, “Est ce que tu as un fetiche?” “Do you have a festish?”  And hiding the phrase book under a napkin is one thing, but under the pillow while you’re looking for “Easy, tiger!” (pg.117) is something else again.
2. Another recent discovery that has given me a lot of fun every day is the terrific blog, French Word A Day, by a fellow Arizonan who married a handsome Frenchman and lives with him and their two children on their vineyard where he makes wine and she writes and sells books. Sigh! This is a blog for lovers of France, lovers of dogs, lovers of photography, lovers of words in either French or English.

Books and Maps

1. When we visited Carmel recently, my brother and his wife kindly loaned us their (autographed–which means they think we’ll be honor-bound to give it back) copy of Around and About Paris by Thirza Vallois. This volume covers the 1st through the 7th arrondissements in much greater detail than anybody really needs, but like the Strolling Istanbul Guidebook, it is meant to be savored.
2. While buying a Michelin France road map, I spotted a new-to-me map of Paris, called MapEasy’s Giudemap to Paris, and had to have it, too. It claims to be waterproof and tear resistant and it is colorful and looks easy to read and use. The proof is in the pudding, so I’ll take both it and the Streetwise Paris map (which turns out to have such small print that I have to carry a magnifying glass.)

The Most Important Tip I am Going to Give You

Check the NEW web site of France Made Easy.  Marie Cruikshank, a lovely Scottish lady, started a company called Scotland Made Easy many years ago, and because she loves France and is fluent in French, she has added France to her trip planning business. She plans the kind of tailor-made, exclusive trips for discerning travelers that have large travel libraries and watch lots of travel movies and want to know about the real country and the people who live there, not just the people who sit next to them in the tour bus. (Just like you and me).

Marie is helping Ken and me with a lot of the details of our trip and I know that I can trust her advice because she has personally checked out these places and knows whereof she speaks.  I’ll talk more later about the details of some of the wonderful plans she has for us in Normandy and Brittany, but I’ve gone on long enough for today.

If you have questions for Marie, please feel free to post them here, and I’ll ask her to drop by and try to reply. But do take a look at her web site first to get a feel for what she does.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Strange Maps Cover

Destination: The World

Book: Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities by Frank Jacobs (Pub. date 10/29/09)

My name is Vera Marie and I am addicted to maps. What is more, I do not want to be cured.

What traveler does not love to thumb through an Atlas, or twirl a globe? Come on, admit it. Somewhere in your house you have a drawer full of road maps. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I even love an old book of historic maps that show me what the boundaries of Europe and Asia looked like from the Roman era to World War II.

Frank Jacobs has cleverly played to the weakness of the mapoholic in a blog, and now a book,[amazonify]0142005258::text::::Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities[/amazonify]. Resistance is futile. You WILL either ask for this book for a Christmas present, or buy it for someone near to you so that you can surreptitiously thumb through the pages. Just do not try to use these maps to get from here to there. A travel book, it is not.

Some of the maps at the beginning of the book are of the “Where dragons be” variety. They were created back in the day when fanciful cartographers drew maps that led gullible mapoholics like Columbus and Magellan to venture beyond the known world. But most of the fanciful maps in this book go beyond geography as we know it.

The beautiful creatures of the Aleph maps that created anthropomorphic maps of European nations. Or maps of the world as someone wished it were divided, like  a 15-state USA, or divided the way it might have if the Great War turned out differently.

And what a shock to learn that when I dug in my back yard as a child and found a rubber band, my father’s explanation was wrong. He said I had dug all the way to China and found the rubber band from a Chinese pigtail. The Antipodean map shows that I would have struck salt water–not a Chinese pigtail, because none of the United States lies in a straight line through the globe to China.

But stop me before I thumb through the 229 pages of this book and 100+ images and tell you about every single one! (Disclaimer. The publishers sent me a copy of this book, making them an enabler in therapy talk.)

• Mapping out the future of A Traveler’s Library is easy–
• One and sometimes TWO Newly Published or Sneak Preview Books each week for the next few weeks.
• Thursday the first of two Truly Frightening Halloween posts.
• And  Friday–a new feature–French Fridays, starting with the NEW edition of Hemingway’s Moveable Feast. (Continuing until we run out of books about France)
• Some excellent Guest Posts will show up over the next weeks and Tuesday, November 3–a GREAT treat–No, I am not telling–you will just have to come see. (Clues: Author, debunking)
• Make it easy on yourself and subscribe so you do not miss any of the excitement.

Your turn–do you care to confess to your mapoholicism? And tell us your particular symptoms?

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Keith Jenkins

Guest author: Keith Jenkins

I am very happy to welcome Keith to A Traveler’s Library to write about a book that inspired him to travel. And travel he has. He has circled the globe and writes beautifully about his observations and experiences at Velvet Escape.

Keith has also inspired me to start a new series of writers talking about a book or movie that lit the fire in them that made them want to travel. If you write about travel and would like to join the party, please let me know.

All Keith’s friends wished him well when he flew home to be with his father who was recently gravely ill…

As I looked at my Dad lying in the hospital bed, I couldn’t help but reminisce about his career with the airline and how that ignited my boundless fascination with travel.  For comments and He was always on the go, traveling to the four corners of the globe. Each time he returned, he told me many stories about the places he’d visited and the people he’d met. As a kid, I was totally struck by awe. I would sit on his lap and listen intently while I made silent notes.

When I was eight, my parents bought me a 20-plus volume encyclopedia called The World & Its People. It was fantastic: the detailed stories about our world, history, cultures, geography, etc.. backed by gorgeous photos (unfortunately, the last edition of it dates back to 1980). I would look up the places my Dad had been to and read more about them. I would pull out the encyclopedia and point to the pictures of the places he’d visited and try to visualize him standing there. He would look over my shoulder and tell me about the sights that were not in the pictures. Each time he told me about his travel journeys, I would ask if he’d seen this place or that, or tried a certain food – I had so many questions, I bet he was sorry he bought me that encyclopedia!

That was the start of my love affair with travel really. When I was in my early-teens, my sister bought me a thick Dorling Kindersly book called [amazonify]0756619521::text::::[/amazonify]Geography of the World* . I was stunned. The rich & colourful illustrations & photos, plus the data of each country in the world just caught my imagination. I was already a statistic & geography freak at the time so it wasn’t too difficult to get totally smitten with this book!

When I started traveling, I had every statistic firmly implanted in my head. I could rattle off data like the size of the country, its population and GDP, the most important economic activities, the major cities and the most popular tourist sites. I was literally a walking geographic encyclopedia! My Dad loved it. He began to take me along on his flights and we visited places like Hong Kong, Sydney and London together, and I dragged him to every place or attraction I’d read about!

My Dad is a lot better now and has been discharged from the hospital. The time I spent at his side in the hospital and the memories that conjured was priceless. I owe much to him but most of all, he instilled in me a great spirit of adventure and a profound desire to see the world and experience its many wonders.

I’m Keith Jenkins, a thirty-something based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Travel and writing are my biggest passions. I’ve traveled extensively across 60+ countries on six continents. The experiences I’ve gained from traveling are priceless. You can read more about my adventures on my blog, Velvet Escape.

*A DK Children’s book recommended for ages 9-12, latest edition 2006.

Thanks, Keith, for reminding us how important it is to introduce children to geography while they are still at the “age of wonder.” Readers, would you like to try to stump Keith with your geography questions? I’m sure you must have some questions for him about all the places he has traveled. Let’s talk.

I have one question. Since he grew up in the southern Hemisphere, was Keith confused by the maps which almost always are from a north-centric point of view?

And  if you like Keith’s post about his inspiration for travel, please pass on the love with one of the buttons below referring people through Stumble Upon, Facebook, Twitter, or one of the other avenues of social media. Thanks!

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

The Whole World in Somebody's Hands

Added August 29, 2009, a note from Kerry Dexter. I will let you know if Laura starts up again with the geography site, but meanwhile, here’s another suggestion:

Did you know that Free Rice a site that uses vocabulary games to generate donations of food for the hungry, now also has locate that country and name a country’s capitol city games you can play to donate in this good cause as well? doesn’t cost anything tp play, donations are made by sponsors for each right answer. might be a fun way to add to your learning. (Kerry Dexter)

Back to original post:

No matter how much I travel and how much I read about travel, huge swaths of the world remain for me terra incognito.  You know, those lands that lie on the edges of old maps, designated by the mapmaker as the home of dragons?

My mother’s library included a great book, which I still dip into from time to time, [amazonify]0380713799::text::::Don’t Know Much About Geography[/amazonify] by Kenneth Davis. The latest edition is eight years old, and my mother’s was older still.

Despite trying,  I struggle with certain parts of the globe–particularly Africa. I have never been to Africa, and country’s borders and names have changed dozens of times since I was in school where I allegedly learned geography. (Next she will be saying the dog ate her atlas!)

Now I have an incentive to pore over the World Atlas and some web sites and fill in the blanks in my mind map.

Laura Byrne Paquet, prolific author and blogger, has started a new blog tracking her intention to learn the basics about all the countries in the United Nations in the next year. At Year of Geography you can follow along, and maybe learn something to boot.

Go Laura!!

Photo by Notice LJ, courtesy of Flickr

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.