Douglas’s advice to his friend, Elizabeth David, set her path to becoming a food writer while walking and picnicking in the hills above Antibes in 1940. Known as a great exaggerator, Douglas describes a mountain festival as a picnic. In his travelogue in Old Calabria, he claims that very few foreigners (than) ever get high […] read more

” “The most desolate place in the world” where Mary Shelley thought she was overlooking the Mer de Glace, Sea of Ice, grinding into the Chamonix valley. Her descriptive phrase suggests that she and her traveling companions, Percy Shelley (her lover) and Claire Clairmont (her half-sister), were in peril. They were not. On July 24, […] read more

“A Jaunt to the Looking-Glass Prairie and Back” left Dickens with mixed feelings. The weather was hot and the journey tedious, but the picnic on Looking-Glass Prairie” was something Dickens wanted, mostly because he had been told that any sightseer should not miss its grandeur.  The expedition set out from St. Louis, Missouri, where they […] read more