A thousand-year-old pilgrimage route and food traditions stretching back 'de toda la vida' – since forever. These are what Dee Nolan set out to experience on her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela – through the rich farming lands of southern France and northern Spain.

A thousand-year-old pilgrimage route and food traditions stretching back de toda la vida - since forever. These are what Dee Nolan set out to experience on her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela - through the rich farming lands of southern France and northern Spain.

'Time and again I'd heard that the Santiago pilgrim paths in France were exceptionally beautiful. But no one warned me how powerful the connection to the pilgrims of the past would be.' Dee Nolan's award-winning book, A Food Lover's Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, took us across Spain on a heartwarming journey along The Way of Saint James, also called the camino, revealing how this famous medieval pilgrimage is drawing us back, tugging at our modern hearts and minds in a way nobody could have foretold. Most of the early pilgrims were French and now Dee retraces their steps, seeking out the ancient paths through France. She discovers a golden thread that connected the saint's relics in Spain to the once-powerful French monks at Cluny – without whom there may well have been no pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela at all. Dee's French pilgrimage winds through magnificent and changing landscapes: from Burgundy's vine-covered slopes to the gastronomic capital of Lyon; up onto the vast windswept meadows of the Aubrac plateau; along the dramatic Lot river; through the gentle hills of Gascony and, finally, to the trout-filled rivers of the Pyrenees. She meets the monks whose medieval predecessors planted the vineyards we see today, visits local markets with some of France's greatest chefs, cooks traditional recipes in home kitchens and walks with farmers taking cattle to the high pasture. Having returned, after decades, to her own family farm, Dee tells the stories of others for whom a sense of place brings immeasurable meaning to their life and to the food they grow and cook, honouring, as well, those who have gone before.

The Spanish Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage rooted in the Medieval period and increasingly active today, has attracted a growing amount of both scholarly and popular attention. With its multiple points of departure in Spain and other European countries, its simultaneously secular and religious nature, and its international and transhistorical population of pilgrims, this particular pilgrimage naturally invites a wide range of intellectual inquiry and scholarly perspectives. This volume fills a gap in current pilgrimage studies, focusing on contemporary representations of the Camino de Santiago. Complementing existing studies of the Camino’s medieval origins, it situates the Camino as a modern experience and engages interdisciplinary perspectives to present a theoretical framework for exploring the most central issues that concern scholars of pilgrimage studies today. Contributors explore the contemporary meaning of the Camino through an interdisciplinary lens that reflects the increasing permeability between academic disciplines and fields, bringing together a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives (cultural studies, literary studies, globalization studies, memory studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, cultural geographies, photography, and material culture). Chapters touch on a variety of genres (blogs, film, graphic novels, historical novels, objects, and travel guides), and transnational perspectives (Australia, the Arab world, England, Spain, and the United States).

The road across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest was one of the three major Christian pilgrimage routes during the Middle Ages, leading pilgrims to the resting place of the Apostle St. James. Today, the system of trails and roads that made up the old pilgrimage route is the most popular long-distance trail in Europe, winding from the heights of the Pyrenees to the gently rolling fields and woods of Galicia. Hundreds of thousands of modern-day pilgrims, art lovers, historians, and adventurers retrace the road today, traveling through a stunningly varied landscape which contains some of the most extraordinary art and architecture in the western world. For any visitor, the Road to Santiago is a treasure trove of historical sites, rustic Spanish villages, churches and cathedrals, and religious art. To fully appreciate the riches of this unique route, look no further than The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago, a fascinating step-by-step guide to the cultural history of the Road for pilgrims, hikers, and armchair travelers alike. Organized geographically, the book covers aspects of the terrain, places of interest, history, artistic monuments, and each town and village's historical relationship to the pilgrimage. The authors have led five student treks along the Road, studying the art, architecture, and cultural sites of the pilgrimage road from southern France to Compostela. Their lectures, based on twenty-five years of pilgrimage scholarship and fieldwork, were the starting point for this handbook.

From "the world's greatest tour guide," a deeply-researched, captivating journey through the rich history of Christianity and the winding paths of the French and Italian countryside that will feed mind, body, and soul (New York Times). "What a wondrous work! This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage will have you wondering whether we should all embark on such a journey, either of the body, the soul or, as in Egan's case, both." --Cokie Roberts "Egan draws us in, making us feel frozen in the snow-covered Alps, joyful in valleys of trees with low-hanging fruit, skeptical of the relics of embalmed saints and hopeful for the healing of his encrusted toes, so worn and weathered from their walk."--The Washington Post Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity to explore the religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and travels overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy, accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium. A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.

Andrea Corr’s Barefoot Pilgrimage is a compelling and honest memoir.

"'A donkey?' blurted my family as one. For a moment it didn't seem they'd ever be able to list all the reasons that made this so entertainingly ludicrous. . . .Yes, I'd never ridden a donkey on a beach or petted one at a city farm, never even pinned a cardboard tail to one's throat after the cake and ice cream....A donkey would be my hairy-coated hair shirt, making my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela a truer test of the will, a trial." With these words, having no knowledge of Spanish and even less about the care and feeding of donkeys, Tim Moore, Britain's indefatigable traveling Everyman, sets out on a pilgrimage to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela with a donkey named Shinto as his companion. Armed only with the Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century handbook to the route, and expert advice on donkey management from Robert Louis Stevenson, Moore and his four-legged companion travel the ancient five-hundred-mile route from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, on the French side of the Pyrenees, to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, which houses the remains of Spain's patron saint, St. James. Over sun-scorched highways, precipitous bridges, dirt paths shaded by leafy trees, and vineyards occasionally lashed by downpours, Moore and Shinto pass through some of the oldest towns and cities in northern Spain in colorful company, both past and present. Pilgrims real and imagined have traveled this route throughout the ages, a diverse cast of wayfarers spanning Charlemagne, St. Francis of Assisi, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, and New Age diva, Shirley MacLaine. Moore's present-day companions are no less florid or poignant. Clearly more interested in Shinto than in Moore, their fellow walkers are an assortment of devout Christian pilgrims, New Age spirituality seekers, travelers grieving over a lost love affair, Baby Boomers contemplating the advent of middle age, and John Q. Public just out for a cheap, boozy sun-drenched outdoor holiday. As Moore pushes, pulls, wheedles, cajoles, and threatens Shinto across Spain toward the crypt of St. James in a quest to find the spiritual pilgrim within, the duo overnights in the bedrooms, dormitories, and---for Shinto---adjacent grassy fields of northern Spain's hostels, inns, convents, seminaries, and farmhouses. Shinto, a donkey with a finely honed talent for relieving himself at the most inopportune moments, has better luck in the search for his next meal than Moore does in finding his inner St. Francis. Undaunted, however, Man and Beast finally arrive at the cathedral and a successful end to their journey. For readers who delighted in his earlier books, Travels with My Donkey is the next hilarious chapter in the travels of Tim Moore, a book that keeps the bones of St. James rattling till this day.

From the author of the acclaimed Food Lover's Guide to Paris, this guide to France's greatest restaurants, bistros, markets, pastry and cheese shops includes 75 authentic recipes from French chefs and 150 specially commissioned photographs.

"Gershman's guide may be the best guide for novice and pro shoppers alike," praises The Washington Post, and you'll agree. For more than ten years, Suzy Gershman has been leading savvy shoppers to the world's best finds. Now Born to Shop France is easier to use and packed with more up-to-date listings than ever before. Inside you'll find: The best of the shopping scene, from Paris' designer boutiquest to colorful markets in Provence Great gift ideas, even for the friend who has everything-plus the best gifts for less than $15 The best airfare, hotel, and dining values—so you can maximize your shopping dollars Detailed city maps and shopping tours, including Reims, Lyon, and the Riviera