Books

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Driving Over Lemons

Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia

I recently finished Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart and found it a pretty enjoyable read even if it didn’t give me quite as much insight in to Spanish culture as I might have liked. He focused more on life on the farm and dealing with the adversities presented by nature and his remote location than fitting in with, and exploring his new cultural surrounds.

I’ve read a number of books in the “move to a foreign country and renovate a house” genre over the years and a large part of their appeal is how they present new cultures through outsider eyes. And although I certainly have no desire to buy a run-down, dilapidated house to fix up, I could imagine moving to a foreign country.

There are a couple of sequels to this book, so I might check those out before our trip. I’ve got a couple other fiction books set in Spain to check out before (or possible on) our trip as well and I’ll review those later.

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Moleskine City Notebooks

I’m a big fan of Moleskine notebooks. I’ve been using them for my travels since my second trip to France in ’03. Apart from the large size I used as a journal, I also bought a pocket size to use as my trip organizer. I filled it with addresses of shops I wanted to visit, restaurants I wanted to try and hotels and hostels in which to sleep. I took notes along the way of places of interest and the names of artists I discovered in museums. I did one for New York that I’ve used on two or three trips, one for Eastern Europe, and even a small one for London when we went for 5 days.

So when Moleskine announced their new City Notebooks I was very intrigued and excited. Now, after months of trying, I finally managed to get my hands on the one for Paris. They are not quite yet in wide distribution and the two places in town that have them were always out of the Paris edition. I eventually had to order it through Powell’s.

If you haven’t seen these yet their a brilliant little package. Included are maps of the city, street indexes, metro maps, blank pages for notes, and tabbed sections for restaurants, bars, shops, people, and various blank tabs for your own interests. One of the best bits, though, is the transparent sticky sheets that fit on the map pages so you can trace your routes or mark place of interest. I have all ready transferred all the things I marked on my Wayfaring map to my notebook maps and have also filled it with my own spots to check out.

Moleskine also has versions coming out for U.S. cities and I’m sure I’ll pick up the New York book, and maybe the San Francisco one as well. Hell, I might even get the Seattle one just for kicks.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some more general country books as we rarely only visit one city on a trip.

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Travel Stamp

On Travel Festivals and Planning

Twice a year Rick Steve’s hosts travel festivals at his headquarters (located a convenient 30 minutes away from us in Edmonds, WA). Now mostly these are put together to help sell his tours, but one can glean a lot of useful information and ideas even if one as no intention of taking a tour.

This was our third or fourth time going to the festival, and was by far the most helpful. We attended two classes, one on France presented by Steve Smith, the coauthor of the Rick Steves’ France books, and one was an intro to french for travelers.

While I didn’t really learn anything in either class, the France class was nice because I got to see pictures of most of the places I’ve been reading about. I think Irene probably got more out of them than me because she’s a bit behind on the reading and this class helped motivate her to start reading the books.

After the class though, thanks to our friend G, who is an editor at Rick Steves, I was able to talk to Smith himself and run my itinerary by him to see what he thought. I was a little worried that I was trying to cram too much in and that my expectations were a bit unrealistic, but he reassured me that my plan was indeed doable. He also offered a few suggestions for me to mull over. I don’t know that I’ll change anything because I’m pretty confident in my planning, though, and the reasons for scheduling things they way I did.

In other news, I booked our tickets for our flight from Nice back to Paris on EasyJet. It was a little more expensive than I was expecting, but still only cost $80, which, considering the time it’s saving us, is a bargain.

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We’ll Always Have Paris

We’ll Always Have Paris by John Baxter

I just finished reading this book yesterday and really enjoyed it. It covers the sexual underside of Parisian history through out the last 100 years, but hangs it on the framework of the author’s first year in Paris and the impending birth of his first child. They are strange bed fellows to be sure and while both strands of the book work independently, they don’t really work together. But that’s ok, because as I said they are both interesting and entertaining in and of themselves.

I got a number of good movie recommendations from the book, and immediately added them to my Netflix queue.

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Carnet de Voyage

I have another book to recommend, Carnet De Voyage by Craig Thompson.

Now this one is sort of cheating as most of it takes place in Morocco, but some of it is set in Paris. This book is not so much a story as a beautifully illustrated travel journal. The pictures are mostly done in brush pen with no preliminary drawing, which irritates me to no end. This is the way I wish I could draw. Sigh.

Any way, pick it up, you won’t be sorry.

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