Travel Reading

Besides Homer and Langley, I also read a large part of Frances Mayes' A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller, while I was on vacation. This is truly the perfect vacation book, either for reading while you're on vacation or while you'd like to be. Mayes is the author of Under the Tuscan Sun, which I loved, and a follow-up, Bella Tuscany, about her home in Cortona, Italy.

Mayes describes in beautiful detail the year that she and husband Ed spent traveling while renovations were underway at their Italian home. The detail and description was such that I nearly felt as though I traveled with her to the places she visited like Greece, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, the English countryside, the Burgundy region of France, southern Italy and other places. This really was the perfect book for me to read right now, as I have most definitely been bitten by the travel bug, and am trying to think of all the ways I can both revisit London and travel to other places around the globe.

While in London, we ventured out one of our six days and took a train to Bath for the day. Mayes stopped here briefly on her travels to see the gardens of Great Britain and described it over about three pages. She, like me, noted that Jane Austen once lived here, visited the Royal Crescent (a curved row of townhouses) and saw a beautiful garden. Though I'll be covering Bath in a more detailed account later, here are a few pictures of the day spent there: