This week’s Book Blogger Hop question: Do you have a book with a location that you just HAD to visit after reading the book?

Oh, definitely!  Most of the trips I take end up being literary pilgrimages in one way or another.  🙂  But there are two places that I most wanted to visit (and they will probably not surprise regular readers!)

The last time I was in London, I found a hotel near Kensington Gardens.  It was practical for other reasons–on good Tube lines, good price, central to lots of things I wanted to see.  But there’s no point in pretending that I wasn’t assessing that neighborhood because of The Little White Bird, or Adventures in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie.  Mr. Barrie gives us a full tour of the gardens, and many of the landmarks are still there!  Plus his house turned out to be two blocks from my hotel (not planned, I swear).

It all worked out brilliantly–I at least walked through the Gardens every day of my ten-day trip, and it was lovely to have somewhere to go every time I had a spare hour, or wanted to sit down and journal.

As to the second place, well, I have a bit of a thing for The Phantom of the Opera, so of course I wanted to see the Opera Garnier, the real life Parisian opera that’s the setting for the story.  And since I was as close as London anyway…  I spent three days in Paris and saw lots of wonderful things–but I was really in it for the Opera.  And it was amazing to see.  I had read or seen so many versions of the Phantom story, but it never felt like a real place until I was there–and saw Box Five and the chandelier for myself!

Those were the highpoints of that trip–but I also saw Sherlock Holmes’ parlor at 221B Baker Street, Quasimodo’s gargoyles at Notre Dame Cathedral, Eloise’s apartment building from the Pink Carnation series, and went on a Shakespeare and Dickens walking tour.  And just to round the whole thing out, I managed to read The Little White Bird (sitting in Kensington Gardens), Susan Kay’s Phantom (sitting on the steps of the Opera), an installment of the Pink Carnation, and a Sherlock Holmes novel while I was traveling!

Have you been to amazing places after reading about them?  Or is there somewhere you’d love to go?