Welcome back to reality. I don't know about you, but one of the things I'll miss now I'm no longer on vacation is having time to read. I've often found that taking the right book with me can seriously improve a trip. When I go to the English seaside town of Bournemouth to visit my parents, there isn't enough room in their little house for the Paris-based Tungates. And so we stay at the Highcliff Hotel, a big Victorian building perched on a cliff top. Robert Louis Stevenson once stayed here; so did Rudolph Nureyev. With its elegant lounge bar overlooking the sea, it's a very Agatha Christie kind of place. And so I always take one of her books with me - preferably one featuring Hercule Poirot. Fiction mingles with reality as I sit in one of the leather armchairs in the bar, trying to see the guests through the dapper Belgian detective's shrewd eyes.
I often try to match books with destinations: in Spain I read The Hand of Fatima, by Ildefonso Falcones, about the Moorish uprising in the Kingdom of Granada in the 16th century. It was like having an app to transport me to the past, the turn of the page replacing the swipe of a finger. Now I'm back in Paris, I'll just have to read on the métro. This year I've promised myself that I'll tackle some Russian classics. Crime and Punishment is no good for the beach, but it's perfect for line 13.
