Ahead of my trip to Japan, I decided to do a more thorough review of what 19th century travelogues about Japan exist in the English language. Maybe I’ll do Japanese as well, but starting in English. The thing I find so fascinating about reading these is that I compare my knowledge of Japanese culture today to what it would have been like centuries ago. You notice the little changes and what has held steady over the years in Japanese culture.
I went to Copenhagen to see a friend – it was my third trip there, and my first time during the warmer months. And to get ready, it’s also my first time reading through some old travel narratives about Denmark. Here are the books about Copenhagen I read prior to my trip. I have to say, I’m surprised I was able to get through so many in a month before my trip! I didn’t read all of them but mainly focussed on the Copenhagen, Elsinore and Roskilde portions.
What makes me pull the trigger? I’ve been thinking about this lately. There are some travels I ruminate over (Egypt again at some point soon is one example). There are also the ones I play with on Google Flights whilst never really planning on taking that next step. And then there are the ones which I dream up, and then before I know it we’re going, bringing a trip into reality, making it happen.
Turin. Torino. I went with a goal in mind — I wanted to see the temple there, at the Museo Egizio. Lately my friend and I had been doing hotel crawls, but this wasn’t a hotel crawl. We stayed at one hotel, not a perfect one, but a perfectly adequate one. Good room, Egyptian-style spa. Confused Americans at check-in. A pretty good oat milk cappuccino on the first day, not so good the second (in Sardinia they didn’t even understand what I meant by oat milk, so we’re doing well here). I was here to see one of the transported temples outside Egypt, and the hotel certainly fit the theme.
Learn about Genoa before you visit. On the way to a new place, they say that anticipation can be just as good as the trip itself. After my first visit to Egypt in 2019, I developed a pretty involved method to savour that pre-trip excitement. Like most people I love to scour TripAdvisor, ask friends for tips, and save cool-looking cafes on Google Maps.