More than just an account of his travels in Cairo, Beirut, and Constantinople in 1842, Gerard de Nerval's "Journey to the Orient" is a quest for the unknown. If his narrator seems credulous in his retelling of legends of the origins of the pyramids and the mysteries of the Druzes, it is with this purpose in mind. While the Orientalists of his day were confident of having, in the words of Edward Said, "grasped, appropriated, reduced, and codified" the Orient, Nerval's Orient remains elusive, impossible to grasp. Poignantly dramatized in the thematic centerpieces of the tales of the Queen of Sheba and the Caliph Hakim, what takes shape in this visionary travelogue, as the author's hopes are alternately disappointed and rapturously renewed, is the story of the artist's search for the ideal.

Shares the influential architect's account of a 1911 trip through central and eastern Europe and includes sketches he made along the way.

The journal of the author on a trip through Russia and the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean, including Syria and Lebanon), published in 1927.

Istanbul s Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between Asia and Europe. Geert Mak introduces us to the woman who sells lottery tickets, the cigarette vendors, and the best pickpockets in Europe. He tells us about the pride of the cobbler and the tea-seller's homesickness. And he describes the role of honor in Turkish culture, the temptations of fundamentalism and violence, and the urge to survive, even in the face of despair. These stories of the bridge s denizens are interwoven with vignettes illuminating moments in the history of Istanbul and Turkey and shedding light on Turkey s relationship with Europe and the West, the Armenian question, the migration from the Turkish countryside to the city, and the demise of the Ottoman Empire."

"The story of a pilgrimage which apparently fails"--Cover.

In May 1977 the French national railways announced they were taking the Orient-Express, the world's most fabled train, out of service. The public outcry which followed caught the attention of Jim Sherwood. Sherwood bought two of the last four remaining carriages, then set out on a trip across Europe to track down enough original 1920s carriages, with their exquisite Art Deco marquetry and Lalique glass, to make a full train. In 1982, the lovingly restored Venice Simplon-Orient Express set off from Victoria Station for Venice, almost exactly 100 years after it had first carried passengers on their exotic journeys across the continent. Orient-Express Hotels today owns some of the great hotels of the world, all bought by Sherwood over a period of last 30 years. It also owns two other de luxe trains - the Eastern & Oriental carries passengers from Singapore to Bangkok, and the Hiram Bingham runs down through the Sacred Valley of the Incas to Machu Picchu in Peru. The purchase and restoration of each train and grand hotel has its own extraordinary story behind it, which is wittily and compellingly told.