The Travel Wish List With Literary Accoutrements

Always Chasing Boys had a review of The End of the Alphabet, a book I read and commented on a few months ago. In her review Inquirer shared her own alphabetical travel list and asked for that of others.

Since I’ve never been able to do much of the travel I would like to do, my list is rather standard in some respects. I’ve never been to a foreign country, except for crossing the border into Mexico. I’ve only visited in a handful of states besides Texas. I have a lot of traveling I’d like to do, so this list is made difficult only by the necessity of limiting it to one place per letter of the alphabet.

A is for Australia. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson would make a fun, lighthearted accompaniment to a trip Down Under.

B is for Boston. I want to see the famous places where our American history started. I’ll carry with me Johnny Tremain and David McCullough’s biography of John Adams.

C is for California, especially L.A. My book for the trip: Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone, a history of the settlement of the Far West in California, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada.

D is for District of Columbia, or Washington, D.C. I’ve actually been to DC once, but I’d love to return and spend a week or two in the Smithsonian and then see all the other places of historical significance in Washington.

E is for England, Anglophile that I am. I want to see all of it: London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, The Tower, Oxford, Cambridge, Yorkshire, Canterbury, all the places of my imagination.

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!
~Robert Browning

April seems like a good time to visit Merrie England, but I’ll take any time of the year.

F is for France: Paris, the south of France, a French bakery, the Louvre. Eldest Daughter has to be my tour guide when I go to France because she speaks French and because she’s been to France and knows the sites.

G is for the Grand Canyon and Gettysburg National Park. I’ve never been to either. For the canyon I could listen to Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite, and then at Gettysburg I’d re-read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.

H is for Hawaii, of course. A cruise while re-reading James Michener’s Hawaii.

I is for Istanbul/Constantinople. I’d love to see the Hagia Sophia and the historical sites of ancient Byzantium. I could take Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium.

J is for Japan. I’d like to finally read Silence by Shusaku Endo, but it might be kind of a downer for a pleasure trip. So I could also bring along a couple of manga translated from Japanese. I’ve never read any manga either.

K is for Knoxville, Tennessee because my sister lives near there, and she would show me the Appalachian Mountains and all sorts of other sights.

L is for Leningrad, now again know as St. Petersburg. I’d read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, of course.

M is for the Mississippi RIver. Float down the river while reading Huckleberry Finn or Cornelia Meigs’s Swift Rivers.

N is for Nagaland in northeastern India, known as “the only predominantly Baptist ethnic state in the world.” The population of Nagaland is over two million people, and 75% of those people are Baptist Christians.
Also New York City. I sometimes think that East Coast Americans in general have an attitude that says that the USA, at least the part of it that matters, begins and ends on the East Coast. However, NYC does matter, and it would be worth seeing and exploring.

O is for Oxford. I already put Oxford among the places I want to visit in England, but I want to be doubly sure to visit Oxford and Cambridge and see all the Inklings sites. I’d take my Tolkien and Lewis books along with Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night.

P is for Prince Edward Island. Anne of Green Gables country.

Q is for Queen. I could at least see Buckingham Palace while I’m in England, even though I probably can’t finagle an invitation to meet the Queen.

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
“I’ve been to London to look at the queen.”
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?
“I frightened a little mouse under the chair.”

R is for Rome, Italy. I’d like to see St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel, of course. The Colliseum.

S is for Scotland. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman sounds like excellent reading material for this particular alongside some fiction by Alexander McCall Smith (the 44 Scotland Street series) or Sir Walter Scott (Waverly, perhaps).

T is for Tanzania: Lake Victoria, Mount Kilimanjaro, Serengeti National Park. Re-read Joy Adamson’s Born Free. Adamson actually lived in Kenya, but it’s close.

U is for Ukraine. Kiev is the largest city in Ukraine.

V is for Valparaiso, Chile. I’d like to someplace where I could try to speak Spanish and see if I can make myself understood.

W is for Wales. I could read some more Stephen Lawhead: the Robin Hood trilogy. Or some historical fiction by Or I could read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series all over again.

X is for Xanadu. “In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree/Where Alph the sacred river ran beside the sacred sea.”

Y is for Yellowstone National Park. Could I be very non-literary and watch old Yogi Bear cartoons in preparation for my trip to Yellowstone?

Z is for Zion, the Biblical name for Jerusalem. No travels would be complete without a trip to the Holy Land to see the places where Jesus walked. Exodus by Leon Uris is the perfect fiction book for this journey, and of course, the Bible would be indispensable.

Where would you like to travel, and what books would you take along?