beautiful biblioteques

When I think of libraries, I imagine tall stacks of leather-bound books, enormous globes of the world, rolling ladders, marble floors, and pinch-faced librarians shushing me. My local public library doesn’t quite fit my mental image, but some of these libraries are enough to take my breath away.

Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Trinity College Library, aka The Long Room, Dublin, Ireland

Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, Germany

Melk Monastery Library, Melk, Austria

Library of Congress, Washington DC, US

the footloose vagabond

We do we travel? Some travel as an antidote to the predictability of daily life. Some travel to relax; others, to enrich themselves. And there are those who travel if only for the mystique of adventure, or even to augment one’s travel cred. I travel to keep moving. I relax by not relaxing. The worst holiday I can think of is one that involves prolonged lolling on a beach or resort. I do a great disservice to all the picture-perfect beaches of the world by tossing them off my list wholesale. They are pleasant enough for one day. After that, the swaying palms lose their appeal and I am restless again.

Do not get me started on cruise ships or — my personal nightmare destination — Las Vegas. Cruise ships, those self-contained seafaring cities, are ideal for the tourist afraid to leave their comfort zone. Within the floating behemoths they will find the familiar: from casinos to beauty salons and spas, cabarets and discos, rock climbing gyms and saltwater pools. Add to that round-the-clock buffets and nonstop bingeing. The only bit of excitement would be an unexpected, ship-wide bout of norovirus.

My holiday is one of “footloose vagabondage,” as author and mountaineer David Roberts wrote in his book of essays Moments of Doubt. Mine is a journey of getting lost in strange places, of not knowing the language enough to have meaningful conversation, but just enough to ask for a beer or a toilet and share a laugh at my expense. The rest I leave to luck and adaptability and the kindness of strangers. There is no other way to go.

Houseboats on the Dong Ba canal, Hué, Vietnam