Flyover land

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been to Iceland many years ago. My family flew Iceland Air to Europe and stopped in Iceland for 3 days. Apparently this stopover thing was a very successful marketing campaign brought to us by an Iceland Air executive. Weiner likens Iceland to Kansas as "flyover" land. Iceland figured out a way to benefit economically by enticing tourists to stay over for a few days. Perhaps Kansas is a state full of happy people, and the rest of the country is just flying over without paying enough attention to it. I have been to Kansas though, and I have not had the same urge to return as I have with Iceland.

Coffee - you can never get too much!

When I wrote the first entry for the first book I read for this project, Reading the OED, (See January 3) I included a count of the number of times coffee was mentioned (24). I do wish I had been keeping track of coffee in A Year in the World. I think Mayes must mention it 24 times per chapter. According to Mayes "Coffee first arrived in Venice around 1570...A coffee bar opened in 1640...today there must be a thousand". Mayes' husband is always on a quest for the perfect cup of espresso. My family and I will be driving to Wisconsin next month. No doubt we will stop at as many independent coffee shops as we can. This will undoubtably become part of my blog. Maybe we will even start a separate blog for it.

Portugal

Visiting Portugal in March seems like a good thing. Mayes and her husband certainly ate well, and didn't have to fight other tourists. The descriptions of the meals they ate were absolutely mouth-watering. I was in Lisbon 25 years ago (a side trip from my study in Spain). I don't remember anything I ate. I spent a lot of time on the beach, and saw many dogs. Some appeared dead.

Spain

Mayes begins her year in Spain - the first Spanish-speaking country I ever visited. That was in 1984 and I still hope to go back someday. Her time is spent mainly in Andalucia, in the southern part of the country. I was there for a weekend, but my time was mainly spent in the northwest, in Salamanca. Along with about 10 other students from the University of Maryland Baltimore County I was studying Spanish grammar and culture and living with a Spanish family for the summer. Mayes spends some time at the beginning of her trip in Madrid, as did I. She was much more impressed with the Prado museum than I remember being. She has a much better appreciation for portraits than I do, having grown up the daughter of an abstract artist.

When she arrives in Sevilla Mayes and her husband, Ed, are approached by an English woman who lost her purse upon arrival, although she is expecting friends to join her the next day she is stranded in the meantime. Frances and Ed give her some money and a few days later see her extracting money from another tourist couple. They are stunned as "[s]he looks like a librarian or teacher on holiday." Tsk, tsk. Will authors never learn not to dis librarians with outdated stereotypes? (see also May 22 entry). And for more fun with librarians see my pop-culture librarian webpage . At least I can rest assured that if I am ever stranded my bookish look is sure to score me some credibility points if I decide to beg.

As she leaves Granada, Mayes describes the few souveniers she bought "a few small things closely tied to my perceptions of the place." Mayes does seem to have a true sense of the place she visited and appreciates differences. This is a refreshing change from the view of many American tourists who I hear complain whenever they travel and things do not go as expected.

Connections

Although I have started a new month of reading, I am not yet done reading The Geography of Bliss, so I will continue to post about that as well. It fits the theme of travel as well as last month's theme of "the perfect place". Frances Mayes book was written a few years before Weiner's and I wonder if Weiner read it. He points out, as she does, that the words "travel" and "travail" have the same root. I checked this out in the Oxford English Dictionary (remember January's theme?) and it appears to be true.

Happiness Study

The Atlantic magazine reports on a long-term study of happiness that started in the 1930s and continues today.

July's theme

The theme for July is travel. I am starting with Frances Mayes' book A Year in The World. Reading the preface, I found out that the book is does not recount a 365-day journey, but rather a collection of journeys arranged by season.

Mayes book comes to me through Interlibrary loan from the Berkshire Atheneaum, Pittsfield's Public Library.