"Start Planning Now for Next Vacation"

It may seem like Spring, but beware. This unseasonably warm weather may have tricked the tulips and daffodils into poking their leaves above ground, but I fear we will endure several more blizzards before it is truly Spring. We shouldn’t get excited about yard and garden work for fear of uncovering tender plants. Instead, now is the time to begin planning for the next vacation in the comfort of your favorite easy chair.

While there are a great many places to visit in the United States, let’s take a look at a few new travel books for Europe. Of course, the new “Lonely Planet” books are great guides. Like most of the other travel series, the “Lonely Planet” books include the website addresses for most of the recommended hotels. This makes for fast bookings and a greater sense of security for the traveler. It’s always satisfying to know you have booked ahead and, in the next city on your itinerary, you will have a place to rest your travel-worn body.

“Lodging in Italy’s Monasteries” is a delightful new book with pictures of over 400 monasteries, convents, and casas the traveler can book for a night or longer. I think it would be great fun to reserve a room in an old monastery in Italy for a couple of weeks and spend time exploring the countryside by bicycle or moped.

I’m partial to the “Lonely Planet” travel books. These travel guides are not only informative, but fun to read. During a recent trip to India, we experienced practically every scam the book forewarned us about. While sometimes the hustler was successful, there were other experiences we avoided as we had read about them in “Lonely Planet”. My wife can tell you all about monkeys and shoe shine boys. If thinking of traveling to the former Eastern-block countries you should pay particular attention to the advice about scams listed in the travel books for those areas.

The “Art for the Travellers” series of books hold a lot of promise for travelers. Currently, the Library only owns four of the titles: Greece, Italy, France and Prague. As the titles indicate, these are essential guides to viewing the works of art—paintings, sculptures, architecture—in foreign cities. I would recommend them as armchair reading as well as texts to read as the traveler is actually viewing the works.

The “Frommer’s” and “Fodor’s” travel guides are also great resources for the travel planner. The Library updates these series every other year so that our readers have the most current information and prices available.

New travel DVD’s include the Rick Steves’ “Great Britain”, “Italy”, “France”, “Spain and Portugal”, and “Germany”. The “Questar DVD” series include cruises to and around “Hawaii & Tahiti”, “Northern Europe”, “South America”, “Eastern Caribbean”, “Panama Canal”, “Greece” and the “Mediterranean”. The Library also holds two Public Television “Visions” DVD travel guides: “England” and “Greece”.

Recent memorial donations to the Columbus Library Foundation includes those in memory of Elly Hey from Mr. and Mrs. Joe Stavas and Donald Hey. The memory of Evangeline Reick was honored by donations from Shirley Kallweit, Mr. and Mrs. Tim Bonk, Mr. and Mrs Dennis Kuhr, Earl Kallweit, and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Stavas. Mr.and Mrs. Richard Toof presented to the Foundation a memorial in honor of Jeanette Moore. Connie Korte donated a memorial in honor of Patricia Kennedy. Rogene Brown recognized Jo Lannan and the family of honored Martin Schroeder with a memorial.