Westport Public Library BOOK blog

It is roughly 2,150 miles long and runs through 14 states from Georgia to Maine.

Although many assume that it is some sort of ancient Native American walkway, it is actually a 20th century creation, begun in the 1920s by private individuals and bought to completion in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The first thru-hike in one season was not accomplished until 1948, and in 1955, the first woman to accomplish this feat was Emma “Grandma” Gatewood, aged 67, wearing Keds and carrying an army blanket, a raincoat, and a plastic shower curtain which she carried in a homemade bag slung over one shoulder. Grandma completed the hike again in 1960 and then again at age 75 in 1963, which made her the first person to make the trip three times.

You can find a lot of information on-line, especially at the Appalachian Mountain Club Connecticut Chapter website.

The Library has many of the AMC publications, including AMC's Best Day Hikes: Connecticut.

If you are thinking about a thru-hike, the Appalachian Trail Thru-hike Planner will help you chart your course, work out a budget, choose gear, plan meals, get in shape, and otherwise inspire you toward your goal.

I also recommend The Appalachian Trail Reader, a collection of trail diaries, poems, and essays including the writings of Henry David Thoreau and the trail's founding fathers Benton MacKaye and Myron Avery. Excerpts from hikers' journals, from the 1930s to the 1990s, provide a firsthand, intimate portrait of walking the Trail.

BookPage calls it a “decadent sequel” adding “If Chocolat was milk chocolate, The Girl with No Shadow is the darker, more nuanced confection.”

Yum!

If you have a sweet tooth are bound for Paris, make sure to plan ahead so that you don’t miss a single bon-bon.

Things to know (i.e., use as an excuse to indulge) about chocolate: a recent lab study showed that cocoa reduced the growth rate of colon cancer cells; flavanols naturally found in dark chocolate and cocoa have been shown to help regulate immune responses in the body; rats given supplements of the flavonoid antioxidants similar to those found in chocolate performed better on memory-testing water maze tests.

So make yourself a map, root out those cognac truffles and snuffle them up.

Our travel collection now includes The Patisseries of Paris: Chocolatiers, Tea Salons, Ice Cream Parlors, and More, a tasty guidebook by Jamie Cahill containing almost 100 profiles complete with mouth-watering full color illustrations.

In the introduction the author shares with us that she has spent four years combing Paris in search of these culinary delights and that the best patisseries are so hard to find. I wonder if her publisher would like to hire me to find 100 more.

The publisher in question is Little Bookroom a small New York firm that specializes in art and culture related travel books for world-wide destinations.

For Paris alone their titles include Walks through Napoleon and Josephine's Paris, Picasso's Paris: Walking Tours of the Artist's Life in the City, and Literary Paris : a Guide.

Bon appetit!

They also give the web address for The International Society of Travel Medicine, which has a global Travel Clinic Locator feature. Make sure to verify any medical referral information you might find in your travel guidebooks before you go so that you have up-to-date phone numbers, etc. in case of an emergency.

The Library has several titles to help you plan a healthy vacation.

Check out Exercises for Airplanes if you have a long flight ahead of you. Fitness for Travelers will give you some tips on how to stay fit while you are away.

If you are headed to an underdeveloped area there are titles such as Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has a travelers’ health page that is an absolute gold mine of information. Did you know about the risk of acquiring measles in China? And that you should take your own supply of Tylenol because 10% to 30% of medicines sold in other countries may be counterfeit? You can review cruise ship health inspection scores or listen to a podcast for health tips for students studying abroad. Best of all, they have a list of destinations around the globe and all you have to do is click on the name of the country you are planning to visit to get pages of travel notices, safety and security information and vaccination advisories.

Wherever you’re headed, take a few minutes to read up and make sure your vacation is a safe and healthy one. Send us a postcard!

Each book in the series explores how renowned artists or writers and world-famous cities or areas helped to define and inspire each other.

Titles include American locales such as A Journey into Steinbeck’s California and A Journey into Georgia O’Keeffe’s New Mexico and European subjects include A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival and A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome.

Here is the publisher’s description of the Michelangelo volume just to give you and idea of what it encompasses: “From St. Peter’s Basilica to the Capitoline Hill, this unique resource provides an intimate portrait of the relationship between Michelangelo and the city he restored to artistic greatness. Lavishly illustrated and richly informative, this travel companion tells the story of Michelangelo’s meteoric rise, his career marked by successive artistic breakthroughs, his tempestuous relations with powerful patrons, and his austere but passionate private life. Providing street maps that allow readers to navigate the city and discover Rome as Michelangelo knew it, each chapter focuses on a particular work that amazed Michelangelo’s contemporaries and modern tourists alike.”

ShermansTravel recently listed the top ten cities for art lovers.

Berlin is number one on the list.

According to the website, “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German capital has reinvented itself as a leading European arts venue, with superlative new architecture and cutting-edge exhibits.”

One of the many shining examples is Museumsinsel (Museum Island), a UNESCO World Heritage arts center complex of museums including the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), the Altes Museum (Old Museum), dedicated to antiquities from Rome and Greece, and the Pergamonmuseumm, named after the fascinating 180 BC Greek temple it houses.

If you like your travel ideas broken out in top tens, ShermansTravel has a rather extensive list which includes the predictable foliage destinations and wineries, but also has whimsical lists such as US Hotel Pool Bars and Ski Vacations for Non-Skiers.

His book is called Panther Soup.

His guide was Putnam Flint, an eighty-something-year-old Bostonian who had landed in Marseille with his tank destroyer battalion, nicknamed The Panthers, during the war.

Join them both as they travel across some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, and through the modern cities that have risen from smoldering ruins.

From Marseille and France, then on to Germany and eventually south through the Alps into Austria, Gimlette reveals the ways in which the war is remembered, with recollections from Flint and the colorful cast of characters they meet along the way: former enemies, refugees, resistance fighters and child survivors.

The Library also has (or has on order) several titles in the Greenline Historic Travel Series, which includes two World War II guides, The 25 Essential World War II Sites: European Theater and The 25 Best World War II Sites: Pacific Theater.

These two books serve more as traditional guidebooks and include directions and driving distances to battlefields, monuments, and museums.

There are a number of travel agencies that provide guided tours.

World War II Tours of Europe offers a 13 day fully escorted tour that covers 5 European countries and their battlefields for $2699 – land only.

Matterhorn Travel offers an 8 day immersion in World War II in the Pacific with a stay in San Francisco and then on to Hawaii. $3195 – land only.

“Visit the ships, see the aircraft, review the battles where the Greatest Generation fought across the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo.”

If neither of these is within your travel budget this year or your Greatest Generation parents or grandparents aren't up to an international travel tour, the National WWII Memorial is just a few hours away in Washington DC. It's a bit of a hike from the Metro, but the Tourmobile service will take you in a bit closer.

There were cities in the vicinity by the 1st millennium BC.

21st century Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics from August 8 to August 24.

Some events will be held outside the city, namely soccer (in Qinhuangdao, Shanghai, Shenyang and Tianjin), equestrian events (in Hong Kong) and sailing (in Qingdao).

The official website includes a wealth of Olympic info plus a sidebar just for travelers. There are recommended itineraries and links to all of the co-host cities mentioned above.

The Library has added lots of new guidebooks to both Beijing itself and greater China in anticipation of increased travel there for the games.

If you are planning to go, check out TravelChinaGuide.com, a comprehensive website that will answer any questions you may have and help you find just the right itinerary for yourself.

Lonely Planet has a city guide on-line that also has an all-you-need-to know quality to it.

They describe Beijing as “a new millennium rollercoaster... where the mojo of MTV and mobile phones has eclipsed the magic of Mao.”

Cnn.com/travel reports that “More choices in food, activities, itineraries and luxury are some of the trends shaping the cruise industry for 2008. “

Most cruises still offer formal dining at 8:30 p.m. and midnight buffets. But many ships now offer casual dining that does not involve scheduled seatings and formal dress at large tables with strangers – Love Boat style.

Some ships have added bowling alleys and mechanical waves for surfing as well as rock-climbing walls and ice-skating rinks. Cunard's Queen Victoria, launched in December 2007, became the first ship to offer fencing lessons at sea.

Excursions can include kayaking, wildlife watches, bike tours and dolphin encounters.

In 2007, the Caribbean accounted for 43 percent of cruise bookings, Alaska 15 percent, the Mexican Riviera 8 percent, and Europe/Mediterranean 8 percent.

And while more than 50 percent of travel overall is booked online, only 7 percent of cruises are booked online due to the complexity of cruise bookings and the need for advice, especially for first-time cruisers.

If you are looking for some information before you call your travel agent, or some suggested destinations, check out the Library’s cruise guidebooks collection.

By the way, if you want to have the cruise ship experience with ever leaving port, beginning in 2009 the QE2 will be permanently berthed at a specially-constructed pier in Dubai to serve as a luxury floating hotel, retail and entertainment destination.

Although Art Deco buildings come first to mind at the mention of South Beach, in the greater Miami Beach area there are actually three predominant architectural styles — Art Deco, Mediterranean Revival and MiMo (Miami Modernism.)

The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) is a non-profit organization devoted to preserving, protecting, and promoting the Miami Beach Architectural Historic District.

The League offers tours of the District — which extends from 6th Street to 23rd Street — guided, recorded and one that can even be done listening on a cell phone.

Stops include the Mediterranean Revival style Amsterdam Palace at Ocean Drive and 11th Street. Today it's known as Casa Casuarina, a five-star luxury hotel, where Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down in 1997.

Most of the district hotels are small, Art Deco and aglow with neon light. These hotels catered to the middle-class tourists. The wealthy vacationers went to Palm Beach.

My favorite is The Tiffany Hotel at 801 Collins Avenue, now known as simply The Hotel of South Beach. The entry facade looks like a rocket ship and it has a spire on top. Very Flash Gordon.

There is lots of good food to be had in the district. Gloria Estefan has a restaurant there called Larios on the Beach, which serves the most delicious Cuban food.

Check out our Miami travel guides before you go. If Key West is your destination you might want to take a slight detour!

You can find lots of tips there on how to get started and stay motivated.

Here’s an idea. How about a walking vacation?

Crown Journeys, a series of literary travel books, matches interesting writers with interesting places. The only rule of the format is that the writers take their journeys on foot.

In the latest addition to the series, Charm City, Madison Smartt Bell takes us on a tour of Baltimore, from the Inner Harbor to neighborhoods not on the tourist map. Bell’s tour reveals why Baltimore was nicknamed Charm City and why the nickname stuck.

Best selling authors have contributed titles. There is Edwidge Danticat’s After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, Myla Goldberg’s Time's Magpie: A Walk in Prague, and Michael Cunningham’s Land's End: A Walk through Provincetown.

My personal favorites are Christopher Buckley’s Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, and Bill McKibbin’s Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape, Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York Adirondacks. Both cover places where I have spent a great deal of time and about which I thought there was nothing else to know, but was pleasantly surprised by the new insights they offered.

The Library has other practical walking guides as well, including Frommer’s Memorable Walks series, and there is a wealth of information on the Internet. Start with Country Walkers, a tour provider that offers walking tour packages around the globe. I like their slogan: “Explore the world … one step at a time.”

And just think of all those calories you will burn up …

The New York City American Girls Place – which offers Broadway-style shows, gourmet dining, and even a hair salon for dolls – is located at 609 Fifth Avenue (at 49th Street) in Manhattan.

This is a day trip you have to plan way in advance.

There is a two-month wait, at least, for café reservations -- call toll-free 1-877-247-5223. Online reservations are not accepted, but you should check out their website anyway.

For the uninitiated, The American Girls Collection is a brand of dolls where each character represents a particular period and region of U.S. history. They come with period costumes and a variety of interesting accessories. You can even buy matching outfits for doll and child.

The best part is the books. Each doll in the set has her story told through several volumes of fiction, with craft books, cookbooks and all sorts of companion volumes, that enable your girl to totally lose herself in another time and place.

Written for seven-to-twelve-year-olds, the books cover topics such as child labor, child abuse, poverty, racism, slavery, animal abuse, and war, among other topics, with a gentle, yet enlightening, tone.

I know I am getting old because the latest “historic” doll, Julie, is from the 1970s. That must seem as long ago to today’s girls as the Civil War did to me!

It is packed full (624 pages worth!) of advice for both novice and experienced travelers.

Greenberg’s website is also a fantastic resource and currently features a few holiday gift-giving suggestions from the author.

Did you know that food gift sales accounted for nearly 50 percent of all gifts bought last year?

Greenberg offers a list of Internet gourmet food sites where you can find that lychee-flavored sake from Tokyo, aged pecorino from Tuscany, or smoky barbecue sauce from Texas that someone couldn’t stop telling you about.

Tasty holidays!

Okay, rock fans, here’s a travel guide and trivia book just for you – unless you already know how Elvis got his first guitar and where Keith Richards threw a television set out of a hotel window. How about the secret rehearsal location for David Bowie ’s Diamond Dogs tour?

Chris Epting’s Led Zeppelin Crashed Here is a fun journey through America’s rich rock 'n' roll culture. It includes nearly 600 locations, including birthplaces, burial places, concert locales and trashed hotel rooms, neatly compiled and paired with historical tidbits, photographs, and backstage lore.

Connecticut has a scant three mentions: as the state where Jim Morrison got maced by a police officer (in a New Haven Arena shower stall), as the burial place of Gene Pitney (no mention of the fact that he was born here, too) and as the home of The Mystic Disc, which made the list of the 30 greatest North American music stores.

However, if you are going to California (with an aching in your heart) there are pages and pages of possible pilgrimages. There really is a MacArthur Park (on Wilshire Boulevard near Alvarado) and you can check out any time you like – but you can never leave – the Beverly Hills Hotel, which provided the cover art for The Eagles Hotel California album.

Answers: Gladys bought it for Elvis for his 11th birthday from the Tupelo Hardware Store; Hyatt West Hollywood; Capitol Theatre in Port Chester.

The speaker for the opening of this year's Rabbit Hill Festival is Leonard Marcus, one of the children's book world's most respected and versatile writers.

One of my all time favorite guidebooks is his Storied City, which contains twenty-one walking tours of New York City based on children's literature. It comes complete with maps, photographs, and book art - and includes directions to Lyle's house.

The Library has many good guides to help you enjoy New York with your children if you want to make your own way around town.

If you want professional help, check out Watson Adventures, an outfit that offers scavenger hunts at various spots around Manhattan. It's the perfect time of the year for The Ghosts of Greenwich Village Family Scavenger Hunt, where kids and adults work together to uncover the stories of creepy places and the ghosts that have haunted them - complete with bats, secret cemeteries and the haunted homes of Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain.

Lots of fun.

So is the adults only late night edition!

A friend recently forwarded me a New York Times piece from September 23rd about the filming of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency underway in Botswana.

I have been in the thrall of Alexander McCall Smith's stories for years now. Reading the latest book in the series, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, was one of the high points of a recent brief convalescence. With my feet propped up on a pillow I was transported to the agency office at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors in Gaborone, sipping bush tea with Mma Ramotswe and her devoted assistant Grace Makutsi.

The Times article relates that some of the sets, including the office, will become part of a planned "Ladies' Detective Agency Tour."

In a folder of trip ideas that I keep at home I unearthed an article from the May 23, 2005 issue of Time that mentions "Mma Ramotswe tours" offered by a safari company called Africa Insight.

They offer a one day trip which goes out to Mochudi, her ancestral home, where there is a school-turned-local history museum, in the morning, and features a drive around Gaborone, including Zebra Drive and the garage that inspired Speedy Motors, in the afternoon.

There is a second tour, which goes into the farther corners of the countryside to which Mma Ramotswe often travels in her tiny white van.

The Library has up-to-date guidebooks on Botswana and I recently ordered a book called Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide.

I already learned one safari survival tip just from reading the review. You can keep monkeys out of your tent at night (!) with stuffed toy leopards.

The film director reports that while scouting for locales he camped out "beneath a Milky Way that was a luminous stripe across the sky, with stars that glistened like buckets of salt tossed on black velvet."

I want to go!

If any McCall Smith fans are reading this through, I will end on a happy note just for you. The ninth book in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, is due mid-April 2008.

The October 2007 National Geographic Traveler magazine has three mentions of train travel.

There is a bit on page 28 about Amtrak Grande-Luxe Rail Journey packages in which you travel in re-furbished luxury cars and enjoy five-course dinners and butler service.

Then page 30 has an article called "Conquer Europe on Train" which is full of tips on how to navigate the continent's rail networks.

Green note: "A recent study showed that airplanes flying between London and Paris produce, per passenger, ten times the carbon emissions of the Eurostar train."

And on page 120, a "Scottish Highlands by Train" excursion is listed as one of the entries on their 2nd annual "Tours of a Lifetime" list.

This morning I opened my Fodor's "Travel Wire" on-line newsletter and the lead article is "Let's Take a Train Trip."

I also mentioned mysteries set at wineries in a recent blog and another of the entries on the National Geographic list is a "Wine Tasting in British Columbia" tour that involves traveling on foot and by bike and canoe from winery to winery in the region.

I recently added British Columbia Wine Country to the Library's collection if you want to see just how beautiful a setting BC is.

You can access the entire list on the National Geographic Traveler website.

A few weekends back I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon in dog-friendly Woodstock, New York. Woodstock has long been a haven for those who travel to the beat of a different drum. And now the stores and restaurants in town have signs that not only welcome hippies and wiccans, but dogs, too.

They also have a lot of “please don’t feed the bears” signs as there has been a huge increase in the Catskill bear population.

Woodstock actually borders on a town called Bearsville, where two of my favorite restaurants can be found. There is the Bear Café, which offers fine food and excellent wines and The Little Bear Restaurant, which serves Chinese food in a more casual atmosphere. Both are set back in the woods in a streamside setting.

No bear sightings to report.

If you are a dog lover who longs to take your dog along for the ride the Library can offer you Dog-Friendly New England: a Traveler’s Companion, Traveling with Your Pet: the AAA Petbook (covers the US and Canada), and Globetrotting Pets: an International Travel Guide.

If you would like to do some armchair traveling there is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley which is about his coast-to-coast 1960 road-trip with his standard poodle Charley.

Or you can go international with Michael Konik’s Ella in Europe which is about Konik’s six-week European tour with is Lab/greyhound mix Ella.

Go, dog, go!

Eighty years after its publication and 150 years since the actual events it fictionalizes took place it is still possible to use Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop as a visitor’s guide to some of New Mexico’s historic pueblos.

As Cather’s Jean Marie Latour (the fictional name for John Baptist Lamy) approaches his third stop, at the Acoma pueblo, he passes magnificent rock mesas that jut upwards nearly 700 feet. Latour notes that these look to be the remnants of possible “vast cathedrals” of an ancient monumental city.

An August 26th New York Times travel piece entitled Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop brought my visit to Acoma to mind.

Apparently the writer of this piece had the same tour I had, complete with the condemnation of the exploitation of the Acoma natives by the Spanish who used them as forced labor to erect a church atop the mesa and required them to denounce their ancient religion and observe Catholic rituals. The article does not mention the story of the priest that was thrown over the side, though, so I may actually have had the deluxe tour.

A guided tour is required and you are taken by bus to the top of the mesa, although you are allowed to walk back down along a footpath on your own – but make sure you have sturdy shoes on if you are going to try it. Trust me.

You can buy wonderful pottery directly from the local artists there, but we found none of the traditional home baked items that were described to us in mouth-watering detail on the bus ride up. A few enterprising souls were selling big M&M cookies in baggies, but there were no pinon cookies or hearth-baked breads to be found.

The Library has a nice selection of Santa Fe and New Mexico travel guides available. If literary travel is your thing – as it is mine – and you are headed that way, make sure to take a look at Walks in Literary Santa Fe.

A recent posting on CNN.com’s travel section entitled Falling into the Tourist Trap cites the results of a recent poll of 1,267 British tourists, which lists the ten most disappointing UK and global sights in addition to the ten best.

Topping the list of most disappointing UK sights was Stonehenge, and the most disappointing global sight was the Eiffel Tower.

Number six on the disappointing global list was the Spanish Steps, with which I concur, having myself been very disappointed to find that the view from the top of this much anticipated landmark was mostly upscale stores, including a Gap!

Three US sights made the global disappointing list: Times Square (number 3), the Statue of Liberty (number 5), and the White House (number 7). No US sights made the global best list.

When I recently escorted someone around New York City for the first time the thing they were most excited about was Times Square, so go figure.

The number 1 best global sight was the Treasury at Petra in Jordan. Most of us are familiar with this UNESCO World Heritage Site from the film Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail.

The number 1 best UK sight was Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. Thirty miles south of the Scottish border, it is a little off the beaten path for most tourists. According to their own website this medieval castle has served as a film location for “everything from Harry Potter to Elizabeth to Becket to Blackadder.”

The Royal Crescent in Bath came it at number 3, with which I also concur, heartily. It does not disappoint. It was also seen in several films, where it looks fairly large, but when seen in person is so much more imposing.

Make sure to consult our extensive collection of travel books when planning your next trip. In the CNN.com piece, travel expert Felice Hardy offers this advice: “Pick carefully and don’t always go for the obvious.”

If the film location thing appeals to you, there is even a Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations that can get you to the places where your blockbuster, cult, and art house favorites were filmed.