We've recently begun a brand new year. I’ve
also begun an exciting new chapter in my life as I ease into retirement. With
this newfound freedom to do the things I enjoy, I plan to include more reading. And since I don’t have any travel plans for 2018 I was having
trouble coming up with inspiration for future blog posts. Then it came to me! I’d
signed up for the Goodreads Reading Challenge and set a goal of 52 books. As I
work my way through an overflowing bookshelf of armchair travel fiction, I’ll feature some of these novels on my blog along with photos of locations mentioned in the stories. I’ll
begin with One Night in Italy, by Lucy Diamond.
The novel takes place mostly in the city of
Sheffield in northern England but, in keeping with the title, there are some scenes
in Italy as well. One of the characters dines at a trattoria on Piazza di
Spagna in Rome. The day I visited this popular square it rained but the dreary weather didn’t
deter the crowds.
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| The Spanish Steps on Piazza di Spagna |
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| View Towards Via Condotti |
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| Bernini's Fountain of the Old Boat |
Another character in Diamond's novel sits at a café
overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. This brought back memories of the lunch
I enjoyed beneath the Rialto Bridge, watching gondolas and vaporettos glide
past. (Hmm, it rained that day too.)
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| Rialto Bridge |
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| Gondola on the Grand Canal |
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| Wine Delivery via Boat |
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| View of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge |
By the way, I couldn’t NOT have any future
travel plans… I’m thinking of a spring trip to the Netherlands (tulip season!),
a tour of Spain, and maybe a cruise off the coast of Croatia. In the meantime, it’s
on to the next novel: The Alice Network.
Books I've read in 2018: 6 of 52
Follow this link if you'd like to join the Goodreads Reading Challenge.
Books can bring back so many memories. I recently read Dan Brown's 'Origin'. The book starts out describing this mountain monastery and I realized it was Montserrat. I got out my diary from that trip in 1969 and read of the places I visited in Spain and enjoyed reading his description of some of them in the book. I had planned to relive the trip in my blog, just need to get myself in gear.
ReplyDeleteI read Origin too. It’s one of the reasons I’d like to visit Spain. I hope you do write about your travels there, I’d love to hear about it!
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