No comments about The Rough Guide to Corfu 1 (Rough Guide Mini Guides).

No comments about London Above Eye Level: Glimpses of the Unexpected.

3 comments about Provence: A Country Almanac.

1. What a marvelous book by an author whose heart sings with this beautiful country. Every page is a delight and makes you want to move over there !



2. This is a book with page after page of an area in France I love. It is a place I want to visit time and time again. I can almost smell the intoxicating lavender breeze as I glance at the cover.
   
   If you purchase this book as a gift, I highly recommend enclosing something that has the scent of lavender. A soap or even a drop of lavender oil on the inside cover will make this a sensory experience.
   
   While I love books filled with recipes, I could not resist this one. Oh, to be in France at this moment sitting by a lavender field. This book truly brought back memories of my trip to France and I enjoyed the information on olives as I had purchased olive oil and olives at a little sea side store in Cassis. You will be looking into plane tickets soon after reading about the rich culinary heritage of this region.
   
   ~The Rebecca Review



3. The photography is exceptional. Brings back memories of the area. Has provided inspiraton for many paintings.

No comments about A French Restoration: The Pleasures And Perils of Renovating a Property in France.

2 comments about Gardens from the Air (From the Air).

1. Was paging through this book just yesterday in a local bookstore. It is spectacular! The photos are of top quality, and all from above--of some of the finest gardens one could find. We spotted several that we had been to, and it was wonderful to see them from a fresh perspective. If you love photographs of beautiful gardens, buy this book!



2. This book is a collection of aeriel photographs of famous european gardens. It includes gardens from the Alhambra up through Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Russia, etc. There is basic info about the gardens, but this is primarily a picture book. I have been to several of the gardens included and it is wonderful to be able to see them in a new perspective. You get to see the patterns large scale, the axis used for structure, etc. I love it! The book and pictures are oversized.

1 comments about Walks in Rome: Volume 1.

1. Augustus John Cuthbert Hare was an eccentric 19th-century English gentleman. Although he was educated at Oxford, he was born in Rome and he died in Rome.
   
   "Walks in Rome," a sort of 19th-century "Blue Guide," makes an impossible guidebook as far as practicality is concerned. For one thing, the print is too small in this facsimile of the 1897 edition (One imagines parasolled ladies in bustles on the Grand Tour peering at the volume through magnifying glasses on the end of silk ribbons.). For another, many of the streets and monuments have changed beyond recognition. And therein lies the charm, as we stroll with Hare along the Via del Corso, "which, in spite of its narrowness is the finest street in Rome." He next observes: "It is greatly to be regretted that this street, which is nearly a mile long, should lead to nothing, instead of ending at the steps of the Capitol, which would have produced a striking effect" (I.40). In other words, we are seeing the Via del Corso without the ungainly white marble Vittorio Emanuele monument, otherwise known--unkindly--as the 'typewriter' or the 'wedding cake.' Hare then continues his narrative with an extravagant account of the Corso by Charles Dickens, who writes of "verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes . . . put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if year after year, and season after season it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner." To this charmingly purple passage, Hare adds the opinion (in French) of Emile Zola. In fact, at every opportunity, Hare embellishes his narrative with the observations of famous travellers, many of them now forgotten, and punctuates his descriptions with apt Latin quotations from Rome's ancient inhabitants.
   
   "Walks in Rome" is a book not to be carried and read on the run, but instead to be savored, either in one's hotel room before venturing out on a Roman excursion, or whiling away an hour with one of the best cappuccino's in the City at a table at the bar across from the church of San Eustachio, while contemplating the "stag's head on the . . . apex of the gable" that alludes to the conversion of Saint Eustace, who "suffered martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice to idols, by being roasted alive in a brazen bull . . . with his wife Theopista, and his sons Agapetus and Theopistus" (2.135). Hare then informs us that we can find the relics of these martyrs "in a porphyry sarcophagus under the high altar." (I can only take his word for this, because despite all the hours whiled away in the area sipping and contemplating, I have never yet managed to find San Eustachio open!).
   
   Among the most interesting chapters of "Walks in Rome" is the first, which he entitles "Dull-Useful Information." Ironically, the chapter may no longer be entirely useful, but it is far from dull. For example, the Livery Stables may be gone from the Palazzo Rospigliosi and the Foxhounds no longer meet twice a week in the Campagna; nor do the bulls fight at the Mausoleum of Augustus, and the population certainly no longer numbers 432,658, but one can still enjoy an aperitivo at the Caffe Greco, or loiter in the lobby of the Hotel Hassler which Hare praises for its "beautiful situation" but advises that "the rooms at the back are to be avoided" (an admonition I shall remember if I can ever afford to stay there!). One can still see plays at the Teatro Argentina (where Rossini opened with the Barber of Seville) and comedies at Teatro della Valle. Cook's Agency is still in Piazza di Spagna, as is the English Tea Room; and the Post and Telegraph offices are still in Piazza San Silvestro. The beggars, against whom Hare inveighs on account of their "borrowed children," still beg; the artists still apply their pigments in the Via Margutta, and Rome's ancient monuments still glow with glorious golden light in November and December.
   
   Augustus Hare's love-hate relationship for his native city is evident in every fascinating word. For instance, in writing of the Pincio, he laments the "then noble cypresses of the Porta del Popolo [which] have been effaced, and the most interesting view in the world [that] has been spoilt by the erection of a succession of hideous stuccoed buildings in the worst style of Chicago" [1.28]. Conversely, he praises the once-"great magnificence" of the Theatre of Pompey, and remarks how the little church of Santa Maria in Grotta Pinta got its name from "the painted decorations of a vault in Pompey's Theatre." One imagines that if Augustus Hare were to walk through that vault today on his way to the Campo dei Fiori that he would lament the frescoes of those painted cherubs which have blackened from grime and crumbled into dust, a mere century later.

No comments about Normandy (Country & Regional Guides - Cadogan).

2 comments about Secret France.

1. A great book for finding and seeing France from another vantage point. There is great detail and information about this country not found in travel guides. The information about French people and their unique life styles is invaluable to the traveler. This book is such a find, outlining marvelous places to experience and know about. The color photography is great, with insight into "hidden" France. I can't wait to use this book in France.



2. A great book for finding and seeing France from another vantage point. There is great detail and information about this country not found in travel guides. The information about French people and their unique life styles is invaluable to the traveler. This book is such a find, outlining marvelous places to experience and know about. The color photography is great, with insight into "hidden" France. I can't wait to use this book in France.

No comments about Traveler Paris.

No comments about Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an Excursion in Italy, in the Years 1802 and 1803.