Category: Travel

I have always enjoyed travel but since I have hit upon the idea of writing literary adventures that happen as I’m gallivanting, I can’t wait to book trips to the cities where my favorite literary heroes and heroines have lived.

I’ve had some thrills along the way. Imagine my surprise when I found a museum dedicated to a French Empress in Parma, Italy! When Napoleon I was exiled, Marie Louise of Austria took her role as the Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, holding court in the Riserva Palace on Strada Melloni. I have another shocking surprise during my walk-through of her former home there so I urge you to read Rococo Style in Italy to see the other French courtier I found there!

In Stalking Petrarch in Parma, I return to the Italian town where I visited as many places as I could find where the poet might have walked, his role as a clergy in the region guaranteeing I set foot in at least two places he’d visited often. It was such a thrill for me! My post Seeing with New Eyes find me in Paris shadowing the places where Edith Wharton and her lover Morton Fullerton had lived or met as secret lovers. Paris is one of my favorite cities for literary adventuring.

Beyond my own literary travel adventures, I am inspired by design or art that brings a place alive. In Traveling Through the Looking Glass, I am inspired by Timothy Oulton’s design of the Glazebrook House Hotel in the UK, his references to Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland the perfect segue between design and literature. And in Impressions of Venice, I illustrate one of Sophia Khan’s favorite books A Daughter of Venice with her striking watercolors of the Italian town. You really should click through to see her art—it’s hauntingly beautiful.