What can you do when you only have time for a weekend getaway? Or you are on a business trip and can only manage an extra day or so to see the sights? The New York Times 36 Hours (2011): 150 Weekends in the USA & Canada is the book for you.

"The New York Times has been offering up dream weekends with practical itineraries in its popular weekly "36 Hours" column since 2002. The many expert contributors, experienced travelers, and accomplished writers all have brought careful research, insider's knowledge, and a sense of fun to hundreds of cities and destinations, always with an eye to getting the most out of a short trip.

In this book, theTimes and TASCHEN bring together updated and new versions of "36 Hours" columns in 150 U.S. and Canadian locations, from the great urban centers on everyone’s travel list to surprising locales with undiscovered character and charm." (Syndetics)

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My friendly neighbour: the nuthatchThis blog is for the birds, because it’s getting to be that time of year again - the time when many of our native bird species start to look for a suitable place to nest! Chickadees, nuthatches and other birds will start to look for a nice place to build a family around mid February to early March.

If there are mature trees in your neighbourhood, especially coniferous trees, you will have a lot of birds. If you don’t live around a lot of mature trees, you can help to create extra nesting habitat for native species by putting up nest boxes.

Many birds prefer to nest in old woodpecker holes. Woodpeckers tend to be drawn to mature and dying trees, which are often removed from city properties. So if you do have an old tree, or ‘snag”, and it is not a hazard, you may want to keep it for the birds it will attract. Certain nest boxes – ones that are ‘roughed’ up and more natural looking – can also attract chickadees, nuthatches, and a range of species including northern flickers (the picture is a nuthatch who nested in our yard last year).

For chickadees and nuthatches, use a nest box made out of untreated cedar. The entrance hole should be between 1 to 1/8 of an inch in order to protect the birds from house sparrows (an introduced species that often attacks smaller birds to steal their nesting sites). Cedar should not be stained, but it is rather soft, so if you are putting up a nest box for a flicker, a box made out of plywood (paint it with a low VOC stain, only on the outside) would work better for bird that tends to “drum” on the wood. Line an inch of the inside of the nest box with dried moss and untreated wood chips so the birds can ‘excavate’ their new home the way they would in a tree.

Painted beauty - a friendly resident northern flicker

The library has a number of books on how to make nest boxes and how to make your yard more attractive to native birds (including Bird-by-bird gardening: the ultimate guide to bringing in your favorite birds--year after year by Sally Roth.)

I have just been looking at a new literary website for travellers, www.literarytourist.com. It looks like a great site with lots of interesting information for the travelling bibliophile with information on bookstores, literary landmarks, festivals, rare book libraries, etc.This site seems to have lots of information. Unfortunately, to get past the initial listings, you have to buy a yearly membership for $24.95.

I performed my usual litmus test and searched local information i.e. Alberta and found many of our local literary organizations. Unfortunately, they missed the Community Heritage and Family History Room at Calgary Public Library when they were talking about rare book libraries and special collections.

You can find pieces of the information on this site with an online search. For instance, I found Bookstore Guide, an amateur guide to shopping throughout Europe, and Literary Festival Central, which lists literary events.

You can also find a wealth of information about literary landmarks for free through your Calgary Public Library. The following are just some of the great titles that will guide you on your literary travels.

"From the charming city of Bath, featured in Jane Austen's Persuasion, to the Amazon of Mario Vargas Llosa's La Casa Verde, this unique travel guide brings you to the places you've only read about. Whether you want to learn more about a destination or follow in the footsteps of a favorite character, Reading on Location helps you make the most of your trip." (Syndetics)

In National Geographic's Literary Traveler Series, well-known authors offer insights into places which are signigicant to them.

Into a Paris Quartier: Reine Margot's Chapel and Other Haunts of St.-Germain - "Acclaimed author Diane Johnson brings to life the legendary St.-Germain-des-Pres quarter of Paris--her adoptive home for many years--with riveting stories that explain its continued mystique in the heart of the world's most alluring city." (Syndetics)

Imagined London: a tour of the world's greatest fictional citiy - "Novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Quindlen indulges her love of London with a short but satisfying tour of the real and the imagined city. Though she has visited London innumerable times in the pages of literature, she did not make her first real trip there until 1995. Here, she takes the reader with her as she discovers her imagined London and recalls the pages and places of writers from Shakespeare and Dickens to Kathleen Winsor, Martin Amis, and Zadie Smith." (Library Journal)

Search "literary travel" as a series to find other books on other locations.

Other great reads that you can find at the library are:

To find more fascinatilng books on literary tourism, search "literary travel" or "literary landmarks" in our catalogue. Happy travelling!!

Banff National Park has planned a fun-filled month of activities from January 14 - February 12 to celebrate winter. Check out their website for all the fun activities that are planned.

Once you have checked out the special events that are planned, visit our previous blog on Banff to find out about the many ongoing activities in the area, such as horse-drawn sleigh rides, outdoor skating and tobogganing.

And then check out these great guidebooks on Banff from Calgary Public Library:

Travel through the past with An Adventurous Woman Abroad.

"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, travelling within North American borders or beyond to exotic locations was difficult at best and disastrous at worst. Mary SchÄffer, born into a Pennsylvania-based Quaker family in 1861, not only conquered international travel but also excelled as an explorer, surveyor and photographer in the backcountry of Canada's Rocky Mountains and the isolated communities of Japan and Formosa (now Taiwan). This book features over 200 of Mary SchÄffer's colourful, hand-painted lantern slides from the archives of the Whyte Musem of the Canadian Rockies. These unique works of art detail some of the indigenous people and breathtaking landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, along with tribal communities of Japan and Formosa." (By Syndetics)

And take a new look at the sinking of the Titanic just in time for the 100th anniversary of her sinking (April 2012).

How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

"A brilliantly original and gripping new look at the sinking of the Titanic through the prism of the life and lost honor of J. Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner, in a unique work of history that raises provocative moral questions about cowardice and heroism, memory and identity, survival and guilt. (By Syndetics)

And to explore in the present day, why not check out Travel + Leisure magazine's most recent 100 Greatest Trips?

"An invaluable and inspiring compendium of the year's most distinctive destinations. Whether your dream is to escape to a thatched-roof safari camp in the heart of a South African game reserve; explore emerging wine regions in Macedonia; live out your own Roman holiday in an Italian bon vivant's penthouse; or find the best spot to enjoy a kleine Mokka in Vienna, 100 Greatest Trips points the way to the places you'll want to go next." (By Syndetics)

And for some armchair travel:

Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene

"Butcher used Graham Greene's little-known 1935 travel book, Journey Without Maps, as his guide on the 350-mile trek from Freetown, on the coast of Sierra Leone, to the coast of Liberia. Greene's route took Butcher through the remote backcountry of both countries and brought him into contact with the people living there. Butcher weaves reflections on Greene's writing through his own reflections on the ways that each region has changed in the intervening decades. He compares the shabby and seedy Freetown, in spite of its well-maintained buildings, in Greene's Heart of the Matter, to what he sees as the city's current systemic post-war corruption, flat-lining economy, and beachfront swarmed by prostitutes. Through his captivating storytelling, Butcher leads readers along through the dangers and the exhilarations of this trip, and we learn with him the value of taking time to savor the true smell and taste of a place." (By Sndetics)

One Island One Ocean: Around the Americas Aboard Ocean Watch

This beautiful book, full of numerous colour photographs, documents the epic journey of the Ocean Watch as it completes the first circumnavigation of North and South America. "On May 31, 2009, a committed team of sailors, scientists, teachers, and conservationists joined forces on a voyage that was vast in scope and ambition but launched under the simplest of ideas: The continents of North and South America are a single island, surrounded by a shared ocean, and with a common set of challenges, communities, issues, and solutions." (By Syndetics)