Books-Books-Books!

How do books fit into a Vacation Home Exchanges? Most people like to read when they are on vacation! Probably as you are planning your trip, you will want to get one or two travel books, in addition to the information you find on-line.

Often I choose my travel books for practical reasons. If I am going to several countries, I do not want to be weighed down with two or three 500 page books-no matter how helpful they are! (If I will be taking Ryanair, my checked bag cannot exceed 15 kilograms; the only one carry-on cannot exceed 10 kilograms.)

DK books advertise that they are “The Guides that Show You What Other Guides Only Tell You”. So they do include lots of pictures and maps. They had a compact guidebook to Sardinia I used last fall, but many of their books are pretty hefty! They have a Top 10 guide to the many American and European cities that are very easy to follow. DK also has a new Back Roads series, if you are planning a driving trip. To date they have published Back Roads of France, as well for Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Great Britain.

I also like guidebooks published by Frommer and Fodor, which are very comprehensive and thorough.

Perhaps you have seen.the popular and personable travel guru Rick Steves on PBS. He has a variety of guidebooks about Europe in addition to the many tours,which are conducted all over Europe. However, his books are very selective; he only includes the places he likes. His housing choices are usually good and reasonably priced.

I like the detailed Michelin books, because they are quite compact at about 8 3/4”x 4 ½”x1/2”, even if they do have 500 +/- pages! The size makes them traveler-friendly and easy to drop into my backpack! And, of course, while I am mentioning Michelin, their maps are excellent and as detailed as their guidebooks!  

The Baedeker books are equally well regarded and cover most countries. The Lonely Planet series tends to be geared to college students and back-packers, but is also very thorough.

You may take some books with you to read when you are on vacation. It is not easy to get a very good selection of books in English when you are out of the country. You might find it worthwhile to invest in the Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook to give you a huge variety of books to download. My daughter gave me a Kindle to take with me last summer, and it was a wonderful way to be sure I always had a good selection of books to choose from! Interestingly enough, two people I met on my trip both recommended Shadows of the Wind, which I downloaded and loved. I suspect I would have been hard-pressed to find it in English on that trip! (Somewhere I read that it takes longer to decide which cover you want for your ebook than the actual Kindle or Nook!)

 In addition, guidebooks will usually tell you about book stores which will have books in English. However, when I went to try to find the bookstore in Sassari recommended in my Sardinia guidebook, I arrived during the three hours that it was closed, so I was out of luck! 

Prior to recent trips I have started to read some of the many recommended books about the different countries.  I especially enjoyed Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi before I went to Greece. The summer that I visited France and England I once again read Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, which took place in those countries, as well as Germany. It was great fun to be visiting the same places and seeing the Louvre paintings which Maugham described!

And, as former English major, I love finding and visiting the homes of writers which I studied, such as John Keats' home near the Spanish Steps pictured here!

Thanks for taking the time read this blog today. I'd love to hear your questions or comments!