10 'novel' travel ideas
Instead of taking a novel with you on your vacation, why not take your vacation to the novel?
Whether it's Anna Karenina on a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, or Jake Barnes in the dining car from Paris to Pamplona, here are 10 fictional journeys you could easily embark on yourself.
1. Paris to Pamplona, France and Spain
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Probably best to be an observer once they let the bulls out in Pamplona.
Jake Barnes enjoys some dissolute Parisian pavement life with his friends before hopping on a train bound for Spain.
You can mimic this with a few glasses of pastis in the Latin quarter before heading to Gare d'Austerlitz for an overnight journey from Paris to Irun or Hendaye on the French-Spanish border, where you will be able to get a connection to Pamplona.
Remember to dine extravagantly on the train, washing down all you eat with several bottles of crisp white wine.
The trip: From Paris to Pamplona on the Lunéa sleeper train.
2. Los Angeles to Las Vegas, United States
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Get intoxified, the healthy way, with the sights and sounds of Vegas.
Hire a red Chevy on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, jump in and make for Highway 15, which will take you all the way to Las Vegas.
The drive will take about four hours -- or possibly more if you get into the true spirit of Thompson and his travel companion "the Samoan," who detoured to buy large quantities of alcohol and illegal substances. Of course we don't recommend doing that.
The trip: In a red Chevy from Sunset strip to Las Vegas.
3. Tonomine Highlands, Japan
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The love story begins here and proceeds up the Tonomine Highlands.
Head for the Tonomine Highlands in Hyogo prefecture near Kobe, where the wind-swept silver grass makes for an atmospheric backdrop to the tortured love story of Toru and Naoko.
Despite its name, which was inspired by a Beatles song, this novel unfolds in 1960s Japan. Grieving for their mutual friend who has killed himself, Toru and Naoko fall in love but their relationship becomes complicated.
Taking time out from their heartbreak, they get back to nature.
The trip: From Tokyo's campus life to the wild highlands outside Kobe.
4. Palermo to Bari, Italy
The Ruby in her Navel by Barry Unsworth
Magnificent architecture of the Royal Palace of Palermo.
For a journey into 12th-century Sicily, a time when the Normans
ruled over a multi-ethnic population on the island, try treading in the
footsteps of Thurstan Beauchamp, the administrator to King Roger II who travels
from Palermo to Bari and back.
Along the way he meets the mysterious dancer Nesrin, as well as his childhood sweetheart Lady Alicia, but in this treacherous society, who can he trust?
The trip: From Palermo to Bari via Messina. Don't miss out on the historical streets of Barivecchia and the fantastic Norman architecture at the Royal Palace of Palermo or the Cathedral at Monreale.
5. Changsha to Zhangjiajie, China
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Follow Dai Sijie and soak in the breath-taking scenery of Zhangjiajie.
Two students from the city are sent for
re-education by Mao's Communist government, ending up in a remote village in
the Pheonix Mountains in the Sky.
There they fall in love with the local tailor's daughter, while also keeping in touch with forbidden culture through a stolen suitcase full of Western literature (including a novel by Honorè de Balzac).
Sijie went on to write and direct the film adaptation of his novel -- filmed in some of the most breath-taking scenery of unspoiled China in the Zhangjiajie Mountains in Hunan province.
The trip: Journey into 1970s Communist China from Changsha, provincial capital of Hunan, to the city of Zhangjiajie from where you can visit the spectacular scenery at UNESCO World Heritage site of Wulingyuan.
6. St. Petersburg to Moscow, Russia
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The train ride that separates rural Russia and high society in Moscow.
Unhappily married Anna first encounters the
charismatic Count Vronsky as she steps off a train from St.Petersburg to
Moscow.
The couple are eventually consumed by their passion for each other but the train journey between the two Russian cities remains a motif in the novel, symbolizing the distance between Russia's rural muzhiks and the decadent, cruel, high society in Moscow at the end of the 19th century.
The trip: Take an overnight train like Anna, or cut the journey to around four hours on the Sapsan express train.
7. New York to Massachusetts, United States
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
You don't need a breakdown to travel from New York to Massachusetts.
This is an exploration of the mind of a
young woman suffering a breakdown but there is also a strong sense of place.
New York landmarks such as Madison Avenue, Bloomingdale's and the Barbizon Hotel for Women feature in Esther Greenwood's summer months in the capital.
Back in her home town near Boston, as her condition worsens, Esther visits other East Coast landmarks including Boston Common, Cambridge and Point Shirley.
The trip: Take a drive from New York up the coast to Massachusetts.
8. Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, Vietnam
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Fowler visited Ninh Binh and its spectacular rice fields.
From the atmospheric labyrinth of canals
and clubs of old Saigon, where British journalist Thomas Fowler dances with his
Vietnamese girlfriend Phuong and becomes involved with an idealistic but
misguided American, to the north-Vietnamese town of Phat Diem, a town south of
Hanoi, where Fowler goes to report on a massacre during the war in
Vietnam.
In between Fowler travels through the country, escaping an attack against a spectacular backdrop of Vietnamese rice fields.
The trip: After exploring Ho Chi Minh City, catch the Reunification Express train northwards to Hanoi or Ninh Binh.
9. Cobham to Bristol, United Kingdom
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Follow the eccentric Pickwickians to Tewkesbury.
For a taste of old England before the
railways were built, follow the route taken by Samuel Pickwick and his
three fellow Pickwickians, who visit various towns in England during the 1820s.
The band of eccentric gentlemen stop off at coaching inns, several of which are still in business, such as the The Leather Bottle Inn in Cobham, the Royal Hop Pole in Tewkesbury and the Bush Tavern on Bristol's Corn Street.
The trip: You won't be able to ride in a horse-drawn coach like Pickwick, but many of the locations are on the mainline railway.
10. Istanbul to Guzel, Turkey
The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
Embark on a new bus journey to a new life.
The narrator is a 22-year-old Osman, who picks up a book that changes his life; he leaves his native Istanbul and
travels on provincial buses in search of his friend Janan's lover Mehmet, who
has mysteriously disappeared.
The bus journeys take the pair through small Turkish towns until they end up in Guzel. But along the way they learn about the state of their nation: its conflict with the Kurds, its relationship with Western culture and the extremes of poverty and religion.
The trip: Board a provincial bus in Istanbul and see where your journey takes you.
