5 comments about Wandering Paris: A Guide to Discovering Paris Your Way.

1. I wrote Wandering Paris because it's the way I like to travel. My experience of sharing the book has been very rewarding. Mostly people say "It makes me want to go to Paris". With time and distance of it's creation, it does the same thing to me. Bon Voyage!



2. Wandering Paris is a travel guide and much more. It is a whimsical look at traveling in Paris. In addition to the solid information it provides, it also offers wonderful insights into the world that is Paris. And, the author provides you with a delightful, artful look at the Paris scene. Her illustrations add whimsy and color to the guide. This is not a heavy tome that drones on about the city of Paris but a light and refreshing approach to Paris from someone who wants to share her love of the city with you. A definite addition to any travel library.



3. This book was a pleasant surprise, with the artwork alone being worth the purchase! My husband and I are planning a trip to PARIS in August, and are learning all we can that will make it enjoyable. I thought in the stack of books I already had on Paris that I had a map of the neighborhoods called "arrondissements" but couldn't find ANY until I opened Jill's "Wandering Paris" which had just arrived. I found a very colorful map of the arrondissements right in front! It got better from there. I want to swim while in Paris although my husband, who was there for a week in 2000, said there aren't any places to swim. Well, Jill points out that "Public swimming pools are abundant in Paris, and some are exceptional." She writes that you can even "Go to the beach along the Seine." ... "you'll find sand, palm trees, umbrellas, rollerblading, bikes and Pétanque plus a swimming pool..." In his defense, he was there in DECEMBER! ha! We're also learning FRENCH, and Jill provides an abundance of vocabulary words WITH a pronunciation guide for each. For the night life, we had no idea that Friday is "Friday Night Skate", "rollerblading by night on escorted journeys through the city". We can't take all of our books with us on this trip, but Jill Butler's "Wandering Paris" is going with us for sure! [We're going to buy her other book as well! Rendez-vous with France: A Point and Pronounce Guide to Traveling, Shopping, and Eating



4. This precious little book is picturesque and pleasant. The watercolors are lovely and the detail is delightful! An entertaining literary gem.



5. I've been to Paris many times and even lead tours there. When I saw this book, I thought it would be a fun read but wouldn't tell me anything I already knew. I was pleased to discover that there is still a lot I don't know (thank heavens!). Jill's book inspired me and gave me some new nooks to explore next time I am in Paris. The illustrations are delightful and inspiring. I gave this book to a friend of mine whom I am taking to Paris for her first visit. I told her to flag things she wants to do and see. She's an artist and this seemed like the perfect guidebook to introduce someone to Paris's many delights.

1 comments about Karen Brown's Tuscany & Umbria, Revised Edition: Exceptional Places to Stay & Itineraries 2008 (Karen Brown's Tuscany & Umbria. Exceptional Places to Stay & Itineraries).

1. I always use Karen Brown books, and this is her new one. Delivery was excellent.

2 comments about Autonauts of the Cosmoroute.

1. Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, Ugné Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. On May 23, 1982, he and Dunlop left Paris on the Autoroute de Sud to Marseilles. I've driven the route in nine hours or so, butCortázar and took a month, until June 23.
   
   The couple lived entirely on the highway. They ate, slept, wrote, and lived in the various rest stations in their camper van,at a pace of about two rest stations per day.
   
   Other travelers thought they were crazy, if they noticed at all. They wrote short notes about the experience -- it's sometimes hard to decide who is writing -- and Dunlop took a number of pictures that appear here. Their goal:
   
   "Somehow, to prove we could carry out this trip was to prove to ourselves that we had weapons against the gloom, not just in its large manifestations ... but also in its more insidious expressions, the banality of daily commitments that mean nothing themselves but altogether distance us from the center where we hope to live our lives. ... Not to live life in its truest way is a crime, not just against oneself, but against others as well."
   
   Somehow this book captures your imagination, I wasn't sure why, until I realized this is a record of an intense love affair, with both people making the most of their time together on this odd journey. They seem to have created a personal universe, parallel with thousands of other travelers, and yet very separate and meaningful.
   
   Mark Sarvas on NPR recommended this book -- one of those scribbled notes I wrote on the steering wheel of my Ford 250 truck while picking up some building supplies: "It's unlike any other book you'll read this year -- charming, whimsical, but also poignant. ... [You] will never look at the freeway in quite the same way again."
   
   A love story, with a sad ending: both people died within two years of their arrival in Marseilles.



2. There are explorations that take us to new worlds, and the explorers come back ready to tell us of all the strange people and artifacts they saw. There is also the exploration of a familiar world in a new way, and that this can be just as enlightening, and entertaining, is the message of _Autonauts of the Cosmoroute_ (Archipelago Books) by husband and wife Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop. Cortázar was a fiction writer and Dunlop a writer, translator, and photographer, and they had planned for years to get away from the demons of Paris. The demons included various ills of modern life, like the telephone and even cutlery: "When we asked of the knives only that they cut a peach or the cheese, they arranged to bite us and, while we did acrobatics to avoid their teeth, their friends the forks came from below to jab us." It was not the South Seas that drew them away, or the Amazon, but a stretch of freeway they had traveled many times before, but no one had traveled it the way they were going to. The 465-mile Autoroute du Sud gets drivers from Paris to Marseilles in just a few hours, but they would make an expedition of it, staying on the autoroute while they stopped at every rest area along it, at the rate of two rest stops a day, a trip that would take just over a month, starting in May 1982. They wrote this book about it shortly thereafter, and it has just now been translated into English by Anne McLean. I can't say anything about the fidelity of the translation, but the words are full of whimsy and magic, and they fit the theme perfectly.
   
   Cortázar and Dunlop may have had a light and whimsical view of the outing, but they took it very seriously, which simply increases the sense of fun they report here. Provisions were planned with care, as were the re-supply caravans from friends who met them along the route. Mock-seriousness pervades the expedition, among whose rules are that the explorers will "carry out scientific and topographical studies of each rest area, taking note of all pertinent observations". Most nights are spent in their red Volkswagen minibus with a roof that expands upward, a minibus christened Fafner, and referred to as "he" throughout the book, and also regarded throughout as a protective dragon. In the rest areas they write, mostly, and plenty of the pictures here (yes, photographic documentation of the expedition) show Cortázar at his typewriter. The scientific observations have to do with slugs and insects, agreeable creatures that the explorers welcome, except for the ants. Weather was generally good, but finding shade in which to put Fafner was often a trial. Some of the rest stops were full of trees and beauty, but one is designated "sinister" and another "Hideous rest stop, especially after the last one." They are amazed by all the tourists who turn the more active stops into international cities. They listen to the news about the Falklands war, and they make themselves comfortable in their hideous lawn chairs, the "Floral Horrors". They find evidence of witches; it turns out that the construction cones are their hats. They make love while highway lights flash through Fafner's windows "like doing it in a kaleidoscope."
   
   It is fully silly and fully charming, and the book stands as a tribute to a wonderful relationship between the two intrepid explorers. It represented, as Cortázar summarizes toward the end of the book, an "advance in happiness and love from which we emerged so fulfilled that nothing, afterwards, even admirable travels and hours of perfect harmony, could surpass that month outside of time, that interior month where we knew for the first and last time what absolute happiness was." And so it is sad to come to the postscript, which Cortázar had to finish alone, for Dunlop died at age 36 only a few months after the expedition; he was to follow her only a couple of years later (their illnesses are only lightly hinted at in the book). This was to be his last book. The reader finishes it with gratitude; these were two imaginative and funny people, and it is generous of them to have had us along for the ride.

No comments about Frommer's Portable Paris 2008 (Frommer's Portable).

No comments about Moleskine City Notebook Firenze (Florence) (Moleskine City Notebook).

No comments about Walking Easy: in the Swiss and Austrian Alps.

1 comments about Netherlands - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette (Culture Smart!).

1. This is an amazing little book; wish I had purchased it earlier. It is factual, interesting, and a quick read. It is especially helpful for those who are going to travel in the Netherlands, but also a good book for those who want to know more about where they may have already traveled. Great little reference.

5 comments about Journey to Portugal: In Pursuit of Portugal's History and Culture.

1. I am sure Saramago's tales are more lively than they come across in this book. Although I'm certain it was translated with care, the third-person narrative doesn't quite do it in English. I wish I had bought the Portuguese book and worked my way through, it is surely more lyrical and less clunky than this version.



2. I am reading this book and am laboring through it hoping it will get to something interesting or useful because I am planning on traveling through Portugal later this year. So far it has been very boring. I don't get a great insight of Portugal's history or culture. It is mostly a travelogue of his town by town personal encounter with little to relate. So far its been very disappointing and I feel like its a waste of time.



3. Understandably, this book will be difficult reading for many American readers. It is not filled with action, sex, violence, or touristic visions. It is neither efficient nor pragmatic. Nevertheless, Jose Saramago is a Nobel Prize Winner for good reason. He writes with a depth of feeling and intense love that cannot be missed. The translation loses, as most translations do, the poetic passions of the author. However, if one can accept a very different style of writing, one that is decidedly not British nor American, this work will indeed be a journey.



4. I eventually struggled through to the end of "Journey to Portugal", more as a duty than a pleasure. After the first third, the sameness of the descriptions of churches, buildings and art works became a bit boring.
   
   Sarmago certainly writes with insights that would resonate with readers who are familiar with the history, culture and art works of Portugal. I am not, so many of Saramago's allusions and comments on the churches and buildings he saw were opaque to me.
   
   Having read (and reviewed) "Seeing", "Blindness" and "The Cave" by Saramago, I was a little disappointed at first with "Journey to Portugal". However, my disappointment was relieved by beautiful passages sprinkled through the text.
   
   Saramago was born in Portugal and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. "Journey to Portugal" is nominally a travel book, but of a special kind: it describes spiritual as well as spatial journeys.
   
   The book is written in the third person, with Saramago referring to himself throughout as "the traveller".
   
   Reflective travellers will understand when Sarmago says "...when the street descends once more to the old cathedral so does the rain; it overflows the gutters and, as one idea follows another, the traveller remembers how the waters of the Minho ran down the hard shoulders beside the street, how small the world is, all its memories jumbled together in the minimal space inside the traveller's head."
   
   He also gives beautiful little word pictures of the lives and people he encountered on his journey. These are the real gems in this book, and why it is worth reading.
   
   In one especially memorable story ("The Man Who Could Not Forget") Saramago gets into conversation with the waiter at dinner about his travel plans and learns that the waiter was born in Cidadelhe, one of the small, remote villages Saramago plans to visit.
   
   Many years ago, when the waiter was a child, his sick young sister died on the way to get medical help, because none was available in their impoverished village. The waiter has never forgotten this family tragedy. His emotions are still raw as he talks to Saramago, who asks the waiter to come with him to the village and show him where he lived.
   
   Saramago concludes thus: "The traveller returns to his room. He spreads out his big map on the bed and looks for Pinhel. There it is, and the road which heads off into the hills. At some point in this space a seven-year-old girl died; then the traveller finds Cidadelhe, on the heights, between the Rivers Coa and Massueime, it really is at the ends of the earth, the end of life. If there is no one to remember."
   
   The book resonated with me for another reason. To quote Saramago: "The traveller preferred to admire the late afternoon gazing down towards the River Torto . . . . and then spent a long while leaning back against a wall . . . because from behind it there wafted the most exquisite perfume of flowers . . ."
   
   Far too often in our travels we are driven onwards by an inexorable schedule that allows little time to stop and actually enjoy moments such as Saramago describes.



5. This is Jose Saramago's spiritual journey through (primarily rural) Portugal. It's not a light-reading travel narrative. The feeling of this book is something of a cross between Henry Adams and James Michener. It's a book to read slowly and savor, in order to appreciate Saramago's tremendous metaphorical skill. He paints the picture slowly, with deliberate brush-strokes that reveal the masterpiece when viewed from a distance.
   
   Yes, his descriptions of churches, winding roads, rain and his seemingly unconscious cultural insecurity (his came from a poor family and was not a university graduate) can become tedious, but that's only if you don't grasp the larger picture: Portugal is a settled land with hundreds of years of historic layers. Saramago wants to peel those layers back for you to expose the core. Only the reader can decide if he's been successful.

No comments about Mapping London: Making Sense of the City.

No comments about The Rough Guide to Vienna 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).