Archives for February 2020

One of the pleasures of traveling is reading books that enrich my experience of a place and audiobooks that accompany me as I walk the streets. I like a mix of biography, history, and fiction. Thus in Russia it was Speak, Memory (Nabokov), The Brothers Karamazov, (Dostoyevsky), Dead Souls (Gogol) and biographies of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and the doomed Romanovs.

In London I am spoiled for choice, but I know Jane Austen is fine idea, especially Persuasion. I’ve been listening to the audiobook Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. Apparently the British Library is in possession of Miss Austen’s writing desk. It’s on my must-see list now.

Dickens is marvelous when read aloud and I have Little Dorrit narrated by the incomparable Juliet Stevenson, along with Dickens-themed audiowalks. I’ll fire up P.G. Wodehouse’s oeuvre whenever I find myself in need of screwball comedy.

But where oh where can I find traces of the brilliant author, Terry Pratchett? I know Ankh-Morpork isn’t London precisely, but still. I suppose I will have to buy a dubious sausage-inna-bun from a street vendor and imagine it’s C.M.O.T. Dibbler.

I’m wrapping up my (proposed! flexible!) day by day itinerary.
I’ve sorted events and places (hotels, flights, ticketed events), made one calendar that covers the whole trip, and weekly calendars with a skootch more venue and event information.
I based this on the calendar I made for St. Petersburg. Here’s a screenshot of it.
I’d forgotten some of the features. One I like the best is color-coding the text like this: Museums are red, Palaces orange, Churches/Cathedrals purple, Food/Markets in green, Day Trips/Tours are in pink.
Instead of blocks of black lettering, I can see the distribution of venues and excursions at a glance. It’s helpful to have a template to go by that has served me well.

These are the scaffolding of the trip, along with my Theory of Everything documents that email to myself. There’s one each for London, Vienna, and Blenheim/Oxford. They list each and every place and event with address, days and hours, ticket required or no, scheduled exhibition, and website. Sometimes the ticket cost, but not so much. I’m not flying all this way to balk at spending £10-20 on an entry fee, especially if it supports museums.

My math works like this – I fly almost for free (thanks SkyMiles!) and I’ve already paid in advance for the hotels to get the maximum discount. I don’t eat dinner out, maybe a couple of Michelin Star lunches, but otherwise no expensive meals and not a dime on alcohol. I am not interested in seeing plays or opera, concerts or nightclubs. My entertainment is soaking everything the museums have to offer, drawing postcards to send to friends and family and taking myself on Dickens-themed audio walks. Therefore it’s okay to splurge on things like a Vespa tour, or a fancy high tea, maybe even an oboe concert in a church.

Now if I could just find someone to row me in a punt on the Oxford branch of the Thames, while I lean back on a well-stocked picnic hamper and read Wind in the Willows…

EDIT: I found it!