seehapong

Faced with an impending travel moratorium (his girlfriend became pregnant), Tony Perrottet took the family-to-be on the road to explore the route laid out by the original adventure travelers. The results are sometimes poignant, often very funny, and always backed by fascinating research. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. For the first time in the history of the world, a class of people had the disposable income and curiosity to travel. The Pax Romana made the adventure relatively safe; paved Roman roads eased the journey. Many of the destinations along the Roman Grand Tour are still popular today: Athens and Olympia, Ephesus and Troy, Alexandria and Cairo. Where there are travelers, a travel industry springs up. Some of the highlights of the book come as Perrottet explores destinations that are less familiar — and no more tamed than in Roman times. One such chapter begins in the Naples train station (which I had the misfortune of visiting several years ago). Dank and cavernous as something out of Dante’s hells, the train station is a fitting precursor to the “Hotel Hades,” where Perrottet and his girlfriend spend a week. Perrottet takes the opportunity to wonder why it is so difficult to find a decent hotel in Europe, backing the question up with anecdotes from Roman-era guidebooks musing over the same question. Naples once had been the original writers’ retreat, where literary types came in the summer to read their work and hobnob with their benefactors. Virgil completed the Aeneid in Naples, henceforth becoming the first author-as-rock star. All that ambiance evaporated long before Perrottet’s visit. Along the Bay of Naples once stretched the legendary Roman spas. Among these, Baiae had an unsurpassed reputation for debauchery. Sometime during the Middle Ages, it crumbled into the bay “like cake dipped in coffee.” Perrottet arranges a scuba trip into the extremely poluted waters to see the remnants of the Roman Gomorrah. Amidst in waters full of rusting barrels, plastic bags, and medusae jellyfish, finding mosaic floors and toppled columns “was evocative and haunting, like stumbling across a lost city in a rain forest.” Perrottet’s awe at the things he saw — and the filth he imbibed through his leaking regulator — gave me chills. Pagan Holiday provides the best kind of travel writing: adventures for the armchair tourist, described in beautiful language, full of color and history. Perrottet’s first book was The Naked Olympics. I look forward to traveling with him again.

2020-12-26 09:13