1 comments about Lonely Planet Catalunya & the Costa Brava (Lonely Planet Catalunya and the Costa Brava).

1. I'm a big fan of Lonely Planet guides, so carried this (and the LP Spain guide as well) on a recent trip to NE Spain. This is a relatively recent edition, and so I found it to be largely accurate, though (understandably) some prices and hours had changed. Every phone number I tried was accurate, and the guide led me to some cheaper/better than the usual hotels. Of course, the flip-side of that is that the cheaper/better hotels are more likely to be booked up because they are mentioned in LP.

   There were a few bars or restaurants in Barcelona that had either changed names or closed (or I completely missed them) that were in the guide... And if you are focusing on barcelona, maybe carry the LP Barcelona city guide also, since as the title would lead you to believe, the focus of the book is on the entire province, with only about 1/4 to 1/5 of this volume devoted to the city of Barcelona.

   Recommended.

No comments about Fodor's Portugal, 9th Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1 comments about Insight Guide: Lisbon.

1. Told me what I needed to know for being in Paris for only 2 days.

5 comments about As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

1. Laurie Lee's writing is beautiful, simple and elegant: down-to-earth but poetic. I first read this book when I was 14. Twelve years later, it's still in my all-time top three. It is incredibly evocative of Spain before the Civil War - it describes a place and a moment in history seen through the excited eyes of a youth. It is nostalgic but not unrealistic. Read it. You won't regret it!



2. His admirers have commented, variously, that Laurie Lee 'writes like an angel', a 'poet, whose prose is quick and bright as a snake'. For another writer such praise might seem lavish but not for Laurie Lee. He writes beautifully, producing books that electrify and enchant, exhilarate and mesmerise. 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is the second volume of a marvellous trilogy. Part autobiography, part evocation of all the bewilderment and uncertainty of the 1930's, it is characterized by the lyricism of its poet author. Leaving his home in the Cotswolds, the young Lee walks to London in 'high, sulky Summer' with high hopes of making his fortune. He settles, happily enough, in a London boarding house with an engagingly eccentric Irish Cockney family, and supports himself by labouring on a building site and by playing the violin. In a life of opposites, we are treated to a first-hand account of the ugliness and tension of the disputes between employees and unions. In the dawn of the first, disquieting signs of dissatisfaction - a feeling in the 30's that led inexorably to the policy of Appeasement, and thus to war - we see through the eyes of a naive adolescent. It is this naivete, coupled with the glorious spontaneity that floods this book, which leads him to Spain. Knowing approximately one Spanish phrase, Lee decides to see Spain and so begins the love affair wtih a country that was to obsess him for the rest of his life. Never has Spain been so vividly painted. From the scorching heat and vivid, voluptous women of Vigo, to the false glamour and dilapidation of Madrid, Laurie Lee writes with a passion to match his captivation. An absolutely unforgettable book with a host of sharply drawn characters. From the sexily confident child, Patsy, to beautiful Cleo, Philip with his 'fine hungry face and a shock of thick obsidian curls' Lee sketches the myriad individuals he meets with a lucidity that stamps them in our minds forever. Who can read this novel and not dream wistfully of the days when cars were a rarity in our country. Or of a Spain unscarred by war, where the laundered, lacy dolls modestly avert their eyes from the gaze of the young men 'pocket dandies, carefully buttoned in spite of the heat.' Truly a book to treasure forever.



3. It's a shame that this fine book is not in print. Those going after used editions--and you should--are encouraged to look for the 1985 reprint stunningly illustrated with classic paintings of Spanish life. But back to why you want to read this: in 1934, a young, naive Englishman who had never been out of his rural neighborhood packed up his violin and went walking, first to London, a hundred miles east and then via boat to Spain where he walked from Vigo in the north down to the southern coast. I'm having trouble shelving the book: is it a straight memoir? Certainly it is very much about the writer's encounter with the world at a historically significant time and about his own growth process. Or is it a travelogue? It is a very accurate account of the unique Spanish culture and countryside. Although written more than 30 years after the actual experience, Lee's account conveys a fresh sense of wonder and discovery and resists overlaying too much foreshadowing and hindsight. His style is lyrical, vivid as the blue Spanish sky and honest. He is refreshingly free of nationalism and prejudice.



4. "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" [1], author Laurie Lee recounted his first sojourn away from home. At age 19, our narrator-biographer, walked out of his village at Stroud, Gloucestershire, and headed toward London. As Lee himself recalled, he was 'still soft at the edges' when he said farewell to his mother (a poignant scene in the opening chapter). All he had with him that Sunday morning in June 1934 was 'a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.'

   After nearly a year of living and working in London as a cement laborer, Lee decided it was time to move on. He bought a one-way ticket and sailed to Spain. He settled for Spain because he had had an introduction to Spanish. All he could speak then, Lee admitted, was only one Spanish phrase: 'Will you please give me a glass of water?'
   
   In July 1935, Laurie Lee landed in northwestern Spain. For many months he roamed the exotic and history-filled landscape, living off his music and the kindness of the people he came to love. From Vigo, he wandered southward through the New Castile region (Segovia, Madrid, Toledo). By December, he came to the coastal region of Andalusia (Cordova, Seville, Granada). There, Lee holed up at a Castillo hotel until the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936.

   This author's second autobiographical sketch could have been subtitled "From Spain With Love." His inimitable poetic description of the Spanish landscape and its inhabitants is sensual as it is lyrical. The warmth and beauty of this passage [no pun], for example, undulates this reviewer's reveries, not of memories but of what has never been: 'When twilight came I slept where I was, on the shore or some rock-strewn headland, and woke to the copper glow of the rising sun coming slowly across the sea. Mornings were pure resurrection, which I could watch sitting up, still wrapped like a corpse in my blanket, seeing the blood-warm light soak back into the Sierras, slowing re-animating their ash-grey cheeks, and feeling the cold of the ground drain away beneath me as the sunrise reached my body.'

   Lee's "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and its third autobiograhy "A Moment In War" have had a farther reach than any of his other celebrated works. These writings have been adapted to music to which Charles Baudelaire could only spoke of metaphorically. In June of 2002, the Allegri String Quartet in The Salisbury Festival (UK) premiered "A Walk Into War." A musical piece which the quartet had commissioned based on the two latter biographies.

   The author once wrote that autobiography is 'a celebration of life and an attempt to hoard its sensations...trophies snatched from the dark... to praise the life I'd had and so preserve it, and to live again both the good and the bad'. By all measures he had not done badly. He was and is the one modern author whose memoirs have transcended into the realms of music and visual arts ('Cider With Rosie', a 1998 film by John Mortimer).

   1] Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy - Book 1:"Cider with Rosie" (1959); Book 2:"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" (1969); and Book 3: "A Moment of War" (1991).




5. Along with Laurie Lee's other prose, among the most lyrical and magical travel memoirs, with characters drawn beautifully and moods captured poetically. He grew up in Slad, a village next to Stroud, a small market town in the Cotswolds. My mother was born just a couple of years later in Stroud, and grew up in the same environment he did. I was born nearby, and spent parts of my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s there, and it is indeed magical. Leaving Stroud was a bold step for him, as my mother could describe to me as she left Stroud when WWII started, having been due to start at a Music Conservatoire in London in September 1939. Since the War had just started, my mother at 19 went to London anyway to work for the RAF in the days, and as an air raid warden and ambulance driver in the Blitz, at night. She told me stories about Laurie Lee who became a favored son of the town, though his writing speaks for itself.
   His prose, like so many of the great memoirists and travel writers is indeed poetic. As a man who was an auto-didact, he had an affinity for simplicity, but grace and elegance few others have mastered.

No comments about Andalus.

1 comments about Barcelona Step By Step: The Definitive Guide To Barcelona's Streets & Sights (Step by Step Guides).

1. Turner's book is a good, straightforward guide for walking inthe city. It doesn't offer much in the way of photos, but it givesyou the information you need to tour Barcelona in a coherent way. The material is organized geographically, and some of the areas overlap. Each tour has its own focus and is clearly described in its introduction, so you can easily pick the tours and the sights that interest you. The book was written several years ago and of course things keep changing in the city, but it remains a useful guide.

2 comments about Manana, Manana: One Mallorcan Summer.

1. I thought that this was a good book. I put myself in the places that I read about. I think that Mallorca would be a wonderful place to visit and meet all of the colorful personalities.



2. I was initially excited to receive this book and complete another armchair adventure. However, I was deceived. This book was rather trite and cliche and I didn't even finish it. It was a typical "we pronounced the words wrong and offended a lot of people" type of travel essay. I want to learn about the ambiance of a place; not how another westerner embarrassed his/herself in a foreign country by not respecting the people, their culture or language.

No comments about Out Around Barcelona & Sitges, 2nd (Out Around - Thomas Cook).

5 comments about Road Of Stars To Santiago.

1. This is a great book and is a very useful guide to the pilgrimage. It is hard to find, and Amazon is doing a great service in trying to provide it for pilgrims. However extracts from the book with very useful information can be found at the Telegraph Online London web site in the TRAVEL section. Look search under Yahoo for Telegraph Online and then Browse the many pages and articles on the pilgrimage found under the travel section. The book is fully reviewed in the newspapers's travel pages, the site has many useful useful facts about the pilgrimage including a FAQ



2. This book is powerful in its simplicity. Stanton's journey is mundane, but from the people he meets and the sites he visits, we learn much about life and travel.Books on the pilgrimage are plenty now, but I would recommend this one for the everyday traveler taking the path.



3. This is a fascinating book, and will appeal both to those who love travel tales and those on a spiritual quest. No self-described holy man, the author is frank about doubting his faith and his ambivalence in making the pilgrimage. Yet you see throughout the book how the journey emptied then replinished him He draws vivid word pictures about the sights, smells and characters that he encounters. If you have a desire to drop out of the hustle and bustle of life to learn to listen to the great, glorious creation around you and the Creator above, then this book will make your feet itch to begin your personal pilgrimage. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and was enriched by the reading. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!



4. When I bought this book I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd already purchased a couple of pilgrim guides but was hungry for more readable material. This isn't a pilgrim guide but rather a sort of journal of the author's experiences on the Way of St. James.

   For anyone interested in the Camino, hiking or just a well written yarn that's hard to put down, I give "Road of Stars to Santiago" two thumbs up!




5. This was the first book I read about the Camino and it remains, more than a decade and 40 similar texts later, still one of the very best such. If one is to read a single straightforward journal account I can think of no better introduction to the subject.
   
   For my recent compilation of pilgrimage quotations ("Ultreia! Onward! Progress of the Pilgrim") I read all 40 or so contemporary English journal accounts available about the various routes. Stanton's is clearly within the first grouping of 8 or so best such books (i.e. largely those written by established authors and/or academics). And Stanton is immensely quotable; indeed, with 20 such abstracted for my review volume Ultreia!, the Road of Stars to Santiago was the single most quoted text of all.

No comments about Walk! Axarquia.