Ithaca In Words – and Pictures

Jane Cochrane oversees her paintings being displayed

Preparations are under way for the official launch of Walking In The Footsteps Of Odysseus, the new guidebook to Ithaca by Jane Cochrane in which I played a bit part as walk-checker and sub-editor.

A capacity audience is expected to be at Paddington Library for the event on 28 April when Jane will be in conversation with me, talking about the genesis of the book and her love affair with the island so closely linked to Homer's Odyssey.

Whether or not you are going to the launch, you are now able to see some of Jane's beautiful Ithaca paintings on show at the library – for as well as being a meticulous researcher and writer, she is also a talented artist.

More information at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

Amsterdam Nuisance

 

When is a guidebook not a guidebook? Possibly when it's called Secret Amsterdam.

My recent series of blogs, See Naples and Live, owed a good deal to some great travel and history books, not least the excellent Secret Naples by Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini, published by Jonglez.

Naively I bought the Amsterdam volume in the same series, from Stanfords, just before going to spend a few days in the city, thinking that it would unlock delights similar to those I had been led to in my favourite Italian city.

It was not to be. 

A visit to the French garden of the Institut Francais sounded enticing... until it turned out that the Institut Francais was no more. The building was empty and, thanks to a local shopkeeper who ushered us through her store, we were able to see that the garden had long been derelict – it didn't even have any decent weeds.

The hi-tech spaceship-like interior of the ultra-fashionable Shoebaloo footwear store sounded like something out of this world... and so it proved to be, since its designer interior had been stripped out and got rid of, to be replaced with something that could only be described as a fairly ordinary shoe shop.

The Boutique of the Little Ladies, a 19th-century association dedicated to giving women financial independence, sounded well worth a visit... but the address at Leidseplein 33 didn't appear to correspond to any building in or around this square.

Having become a little wary, we checked, the evening before, the information that the entry to the Garden of the Geelvinck Hinlopen House Museum was indeed via the rear at Keizersgracht 633... to find that address clearly disused. We didn't go back...

I suppose in the end all this was my fault for not reading the small print on the final page of the book and the publication date of 2012. But should guidebooks be on sale that long after their use-by date? In a charity shop, maybe... surely not in a mainstream store?