What a year to launch my (long awaited) travel blog!
The Fictional Tourist had great plans for 2020, and top of the list was launching a travel blog; an idea that has floated around in my head, surfacing every time I go travelling, but never started on paper until now. As all experienced travellers know, your well thought out plans can go out the window when events that are out of your control just happen. An unpredicted flight cancellation, using the Lonely planet guide to Turkey for toilet paper, and booking a whisky tour on the wrong date are all events that have changed my travel plans, but a global pandemic? Well that’s a new one for me.
“Eventually all the pieces fall into place…. until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moment, and know that everything happens for a reason.”
So now 2020 is turning into the year that ‘I holidayed at home’ and the Fictional Tourist seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I’m not going to let that stop me launching my travel blog so, here goes ….
In 1790, a Frenchman called Xavier de Maistre wrote his first book while under house arrest for participating in a duel. In his book, a travel parody titled, ‘A Voyage Around my Room’, Xavier views his furniture, artwork and other personal belongings as if they were scenes from a journey to a strange land. He praises his voyage because it doesn’t cost him anything and writes “when I travel through my room I rarely follow a straight line: I go from the table towards a picture; and from there, I set out towards the door; and if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, I settle down into it”. In this way he experiences the joys of travel and discovery in the only way he can, with the restrictions placed upon him (forty-two days in a room “36 paces” long).
“In the vast family of men teeming on the surface of the earth, there is not one who, upon reading this book, could possibly refuse to approve the new manner of travel that I am introducing to the world”. “Be so good as to accompany me on my voyage, we shall travel by short stages, laughing all along the way at travellers who have seen Rome and Paris. Nothing can stop us; and abandoning ourselves gaily to our fancy, we shall follow it wherever it wishes to take us”.
For my “holiday at home” I need to be inventive and creative, and find a way to feel the thrill and excitement that travel gives us. My home is filled with travel memories, from my collection of cook books from around the world, to souvenirs, travel books, trinkets and artwork (not to mention the shoes and handbags!)
So, I’m going to use this time to look back over my most recent holidays and recreate a journey to share with you.
PARIS – NOVEMBER 2019
In the warmth of the afternoon sun seeping into the dining room on the western side of my home, I’m studying the antique map “Paris ses Monuments” that’s hanging on the wall above my whisky cabinet. I bought it in the gift shop at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, which we had climbed after standing in the rain for hours to watch the Armistice Day parade. On it I can pick out Gare de Lyon in La Bastille quarter, where our chic little apartment was located; I can see the Jardin des Tuileries, but on a cold November day all we wanted was a hot chocolate and a chestnut crepe at Angelina Tearooms across the road on Rue de Rivoli. On the other side of the Seine there is the Musee D’Orsay where us and (what felt like) a million instagramers were photographing that iconic clock face. This was also where we decided to have a bottle of wine over a long lunch and I arrived late and slightly tipsy for the Parisian facial I had been so desperate to experience. This was not the chic Parisian madamoiselle I wanted to be!
I should set the table for a “Zoom” afternoon tea with my “Paris girls”. I have vintage china and the souvenir pot of tea given to us at The Ritz. I even have views of the Eiffel Tower, in that kitschy little ornament which I said I would never buy, but which I now love.
On a crisp winter evening on the Left Bank I discovered that great Hemingway hangout, Shakespeare and Company. It’s a tiny book store where you can wander from room to room imagining all those great authors that used to hang out here. This is where I bought “Love Letters of Great Men”, which you may remember from Sex and the City: The Movie. Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is lying in bed next to her lover, Mr Big (Chris Noth), reading extracts as they plan their wedding. The quotations that Carrie read were real but the book was actually fictitious until British publishers Macmillan saw a gap in the market, and issued a book of the same name. My copy has the Shakespeare and Company stamp inside the front cover, and I will treasure it forever.
"Words can never tell you … how perfectly dear you are to me – perfectly dear to my heart and soul."
“Heading north from my armchair, we discover my bed, which sits at the back of the room and creates a most agreeable perspective: it is most felicitously situated, receiving the morning sun’s first rays as they shine through my curtains”. “I must admit that I love to savour those sweet moments, and I always prolong as much as possible the pleasure of meditating in the sweet warmth of my bed”.
MOROCCO – 2018 & 2019
I too, love waking to the morning sun as it sweeps along the pale grey walls of my bedroom and bounces off multi-coloured lanterns filled with scented candles. I’ve tried to recreate the sights and sounds of the souks with colour schemes of bright blues and oranges, Moorish teapots and jars in vibrant colours to store my trinkets.
“I must admit that I love to savour those sweet moments, and I always prolong as much as possible the pleasure of meditating in the sweet warmth of my bed”.
I’d always wanted to go to Morocco after reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and it was exactly as I’d dreamt. Those bright yellow slip-ons I bought in the souk in Marrakech always make me happy and match the handmade leather handbag that everyone loves. My mum freaked out when we were “slightly” lost in the alleyways of the souks, but amazingly felt much better when we used our limited Arabic to barter for some amazing cushion covers which transformed her lounge room. “Best price for six?” (afdal sier sitta?)
DRESSING FOR YOUR JOURNEY
If it’s a round-the-world ticket you’re after, then look no further than my closet full of clothes from all over the globe. In one corner you have a Parisian capsule wardrobe, but that is surrounded by Hollywood, Bollywood and everything in between! I’m a country girl at heart though, and by country, I mean Nashville (if you haven’t watched the show Nashville, it’s currently being streamed on Stan, and I definitely recommend!) I love nothing better to put on my “two for the price of one” cowboy boots (except I bought three pairs), from Broadway, (Nashville, not New York); “Miss Me” jeans from the Grand Ole Opry outlet and the leather fringed handbag bought in the gift shop at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."
NEWPORT, RI 1989, 1997 and 2014
“Indeed, is there anyone so wretched, so forlorn as not to have some sort of garret in which to withdraw and hide from the world? For such is all that is required for travel”.
My “retreat” is a little corner of New England. We also call it the mother (in law) room, but between visits, it’s where I have a reading nook and currently a big pile of new books for my two week “voyage around my home.” I lived and worked in Newport, Rhode Island in the early 1990s, and this room is filled with books and souvenirs from that time. Even though I live six hours drive from the nearest beach, this room takes me back to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and the summer cottages of the Vanderbuilt’s and the Astors.
“I hope that in the preceding chapters I have set forth my ideas well enough to give the reader food for thought and enable him to make discoveries of his own in this luminous realm”.
Happy travels around your home, and don’t forget to send me a postcard!
Ali x
