PICK OF THE WEEK.
“The Ultimate London Sticker Book”
(DK Publishing, $6.95)
You know how it is when you visit a city for the first time. You have a mental image of what it will be like, an outline, you could say. Then you arrive, and the reality of the place and your experiences there fill the outline’s void. Well, a similar process is at work when you play with this sticker book. On seven pages, the plain gray outlines of 66 different London sights are paired with information boxes that describe each sight. For example, next to the human-shaped gray contours that clue you to apply the colorful sticker for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the brief text explains that you can see the royal couple as wax figures in the renowned Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. A two-page spread gives a simplified map of the Thames River, where stickers fill in the blanks that show locations of things like Cleopatra’s Needle, the HMS Belfast and the Old Royal Observatory. The back page is a quiz answered with stickers. The 82 stickers, by the way, are photographs, not drawings. They depict easy-to-recognize London icons such as the bright red telephone booths and the stone-faced Buckingham Palace guards. They also introduce less familiar sights such as the Imperial War Museum, the pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Thames Barrier flood gates and the Teddy bears at Hamley’s toy shop. Once you’ve learned the travel lessons, the fun’s not over. After you’ve placed the stickers in their very proper (very British?) places in the book, you can take them out and stick them again and again in all sorts of spots you’re not supposed to. (I’ve repeatedly moved a black London taxicab from my computer monitor to my keyboard as I’ve been writing this.)
VIDEOS
“Passage to Spain”
(Megamark Productions, $19.95)
I’ve got this theory that many Americans who travel to Europedo so by “accident.” They go to England and France and Italy — in that order — not necessarily because those are more satisfying destinations than other places they could go, but because those are the places they’ve heard most about. Without a doubt, they enjoy the trip — who wouldn’t? — and their hearts are richer for the experience. But at the same time, they’ve left vast portions of the Continent unexplored and their memory books with several empty pages. I don’t know if any one thing can turn the tide for the masses, but for the American who wants to break from the pack, “Passage to Spain: A Travel-Documentary by Frank Kilcar” provides 77 minutes of justification for taking the road less traveled. Kilcar, who hails from Downers Grove, doesn’t tell you where to stay or where to eat; there are plenty of other resources for that stuff after you’ve decided to go to Spain. What Kilcar provides is the sort of information that will help you decide whether you want to go to Spain in the first place. And he spins a convincing argument, from ancient cave paintings and Roman ruins to modern-day fish markets and sherry cellars. Along the way, the video encounters farmers who wear wooden shoes, marvelously preserved medieval towns, sardines grilling over a charcoal fire in the Basque country, the tomb of Christopher Columbus and even what may be the Holy Grail itself. (800-585-2898)
SAFE AND SOUND
Baby B’Air
(Baby B’Air, $39.95)
Greg Nieberding invented the Baby B’Air child restraint after his niece was injured during a flight. The harness, meant to be worn in flight by lap-held infants and toddlers under the age of 2, is intended to provide protection during turbulence. The device is a sort of safety vest made of seat-belt grade nylon webbing, quilted cotton and industrial strength buckles. The baby wears the vest, which attaches to the parent by means of a tether strap — designed to allow freedom of movement — that loops through the parent’s airline seat belt. The Baby B’Air meets or exceeds FAA safety guidelines for in-flight use. (However, FAA allows its use only during in-flight travel, not during take-off or landing.) Available at Right Start stores or from One Step Ahead. (800-274-8440, or at www.onestepahead.com)
Smart Lock
(Travel Smart by Franzus, $3.99)
My dad used to say that a lock only keeps out honest thieves. But if you don’t mind investing $4 or so toward the honesty of your fellow creatures, this lightweight and portable door bolt may help you keep potential burglars on the straight and narrow — at least so far as the items behind your door are concerned. Smart Lock is a flat metal plate, roughly 3 inches by 2 inches, that attaches to the metal lock chamber of any standard door. The lock’s latch then slides into a groove, and there’s your security system. When you’re ready to face the world again, return Smart Lock to its plastic carrying case, which bears installation instructions on its back cover. (877-37EPACK, ext. 22; or at www.franzus.com)
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Contact Resourceful Traveler in care of Toni Stroud: tstroud@tribune.com.
