• Ann Kirkland's Classical Pursuits tours
• Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
• Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited
• Gertrude Stein's Paris France
• Les Deux Magots café
• VisitBritain.com
• See Harry Potter locales in Great Britain
• Harry Potter
• VisitLondon.com
• Bridget Jones's Diary
• The Da Vinci Code
• VisitBritain.com's guide to The Da Vinci Code in London
• Air France's Da Vinci Code itinerary

Book Tours

A good book can feel like a vacation you don't want to end. With every page, you're visiting incredible places and meeting fascinating people, and then, just when the characters seem more real than ever, you're met with two awful little words: "The End."

That doesn't mean you can't continue enjoying your favorite literature in a dimension that transcends the printed page.

Ann Kirkland's Toronto-based travel company Classical Pursuits brings groups of book lovers on literary tours of Krakow, New Orleans, Paris, and beyond. Fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Gertrude Stein? Ernest Hemingway? Take Kirkland's Parisian tour, which focuses on Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited, and Stein's Paris France. You'll feel très literary sipping coffee in the famous Deux Magots café (where Hemingway and his coterie were regulars) while discussing The Sun Also Rises. Stein lovers will get to see her famous art collection, while Fitzgerald fans can stroll through the Latin Quarter where he used to write.

"This was the first time I felt I really understood the attraction that Paris has had over time for writers," says one recent Classical Pursuits client. "It gave me a deep appreciation of Paris as a cultural mecca, and a finer appreciation of the works of literature."

Book-based travel can also be experienced without a guide. VisitBritain.com tells you where to find the real Hogwarts Castle from the Harry Potter series. Are you a "singleton" who empathizes with Bridget Jones? Walk in her footsteps with VisitLondon.com's map of locations that appear in the book and movie versions of Bridget Jones's Diary.

Meanwhile, there are as many destinations to be explored by The Da Vinci Code lovers as there are clues sprinkled throughout the book. In England, you can follow hero Robert Langdon's frantic race against time, making more leisurely stops at Temple Church and Kings College. Prefer crepes to chips? Air France will help you plan an entire trip around the country with an itinerary shaped by the book.

Or, you could just set out to write your own book . . . and then every day will be an exploration of your favorite writer's life and haunts.

 

Posted on April 10, 2006