SIT BACK AND BOOK IT
Dip into literary treasures from the past and let them spark ideas for your own future holidays . . .
Sifting through the pages of a travel tale from a bygone era can open up exciting worlds. Who knows, maybe a trip in a distinguished writer’s footsteps could be in order soon?
Let our lyrical selection from poets, authors and adventurers inspire you... GLORIES OF VENICE
‘in WintER you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china tea set were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky. You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, pealladen haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers.’ Joseph Brodsky (19401996), Watermark: An Essay On Venice.
‘in gOing . . . to a rendezvous with a Venetian girl, i tumbled into the grand Canal, and not choosing to miss my appointment by the delays of changing, i have been perched in a balcony with my wet clothes on ever since, till this minute that on my return i have slipped into my dressing gown.
‘My foot slipped in getting into my gondola to set out (owing to the cursed slippery steps of their palaces), and in i flounced like a Carp, and went dripping like a triton to my Sea nymph.’ Lord Byron (17881824), in a letter to John Murray.
HOW TO DO IT: flights to Venice in 2021 from £50 return with easyJet
(easyjet.com). Stay at Palazzo Contarini della Porta di ferro, from £95 (palazzocontarini.com).
LEBANON ADVENTURE
‘in MY boyhood, i had often imagined to myself this terrestrial paradise, this Eden which all nations have in their remembrance . . . i had followed Milton in his ravishing descriptions of the enchanting abode of our first parents; but here, as in all other things, nature far outstrips imagination.
‘god has not permitted man to dream anything as beautiful as he has made. i had dreamt of Eden — i can now say i have seen it.’ Alphonse de Lamartine (17901869), travels in the East.
‘WE CAME to a halt here on the breezy summit of a shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much about; all around us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars of these Lebanon hills to build portions of King Solomon’s temple.’ Mark twain (1835-1910), the innocents Abroad.
HOW TO DO IT: An eight-day Lands of Lebanon tour next year is from £1,890 pp (wendywutours.co.uk).
PELOPONNESE POEM
‘nOW the olive terraces were succeeding each other in stroke after stroke of shade while the ledges they buttressed were thin curling bands of light. the towers of Alika moved towards us overhead and the ruin-crested cliff of Kyparissos; Moudanistica serrated its high pass with shadows; then tzoukhalia and the tall spike of Vatheia entirely crowned with towers.
‘On half a dozen heights a hundred sombre towers, each cluster thrust aloft of a coil of terraces, sailed up into the morning to break the parallel slanting rays of the sun, every campanile shedding a long blade of shadow along the sun’s advance.’ Patrick Leigh fermor (1915-2011), Mani.
HOW TO DO IT: Stay at the Sophia Apartments in a village with views of Leigh fermor’s mountains from £762 pp in 2021 (sunvil.co.uk).
TRANS-SIBERIAN TRAIN
‘OUtSiDE the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched.’ Angela Carter (1940-1992), nights At the Circus.
HOW TO DO IT: See seat61.com and trains.realrussia.co.uk; Moscow to Beijing tickets from £500.
DESERT DREAM
‘in tHE desert i had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. i had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there.’ Wilfred thesiger (1910-2003), Arabian Sands.
HOW TO DO IT: An 11-day Oman Adventure tour from £2,845pp in 2021 (wildfrontierstravel.com).
ON THE SILK ROAD
‘tHE Registan of Samarkand was originally, and is still even in its ruin, the noblest public square in the world. i know of nothing in the east approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur; and nothing in Europe . . . which can even aspire to enter the competition.
‘no European spectacle indeed can adequately be compared to it, in our inability to point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by gothic cathedrals of the finest order.’ Lord Curzon (18591925), Russia in Central Asia in 1889 & the Anglo-Russian Question.
HOW TO DO IT: Eight-day Essential Uzbekistan tour from £1,920pp in 2021 (regent-holidays.co.uk).