A Year in the World

@brittarnhild

In between travels I feed myself on travel litterature. Female travelling authors are my favorite. I can´t quite remember, but I think it started in Provence nine years ago when we, by chance, came across Alexandra David-Neels house and I started to read about her and found the book where she wrote about her journey to Lhasa, the forbidden city in Tibet.

No, no, it started before that. It started in New York in October 2002. I spent two weeks there on my own, as an oberver at the UN General Assembly. The hotel where I stayed had no breakfast, so every morning I walked over to Borders in 5th Street and ate my books breakfast there. There I discovered the Traveler´s Tales series, and filled my suitcase with them.

No, no, no, it started even before that. It started with Frances Mayes´book, first about her books about buying  and restoring a house in Tuscany, then in 2006 her A Year in the World came.

I have read the book to pieces.
And it has sent me further along to other books and writers:
French Colette
Spanish Lorca
Pessoa and The Book of Disquiet
to mention a few.

Frances Mayes is again and again taking me around the world. Through her books, through her blog, and now we are also frinds on facebook and I follow her on instagram . She has opened the world of Luca Signorelli to me, and sent me art hunting for his paintings in Venice, Florence and London, she has made me start to write the tale of our countryside cabin in Western Norway, but most of all, she again and again sing me travel lullaby´s sending me around the world on a magic carpet.

Frances and her husband Edward, owns a house in Tuscany, Bramasole. On top of my list of a million things to do before I die is:
go to Bramasole to spend a night with Frances & Ed, and Terje, two bottles of wine, food from Fran´s kitchen and cookbook, and sharing travel tales.

 

Paradice!

Photos from a week I spent in Tuscany some years ago