("The Water Mirror" +)

[fiefoe]

 
"Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel" by Rachael Antony and Joel Henry.

The book is handsomely illustrated and bound, but packaging can only get one this far. It reminds me of "Paris Out of Hand" and how hard it is to pull off meaningful (or just non-cloying) surrealism. Ideas like "Airport Tourism" and "Bureaucratic Odyssey" make me vaguely resentful -- why can't we just play it straight and square? Travel is exciting enough without gimmicks. "Mascot Travel" means getting your pet figurine into every photo. I rest my case.  

One good idea, maybe: set your travel companion loose and see if you two can meet by chance later that day.

The last picture in the guide is of a mermaid wearing giant sunglasses and wielding a water pistol, which brings me to Kai Meyer's fantasy novel. [Note: I should make a list of novels about apprentices.]

After "Bread and Tulips", I kept on meaning to read books set in Venice. But neither "Miss Garnet's Angel" nor this fantasy matches the sunlit water city in my idealization. Here, mermaids are beautiful creatures with ugly, face-splitting maws, and live stone lions that mostly lost the ability to fly patrol the bridge-streets.