I am a food and travel writer as well as a cruise ship enrichment speaker: my passion is exploring the cuisine, history, and culture of new places and writing about them here in my free bi-weekly (twice monthly) Destination Curation newsletter where I look at the intersection of history, culture, and cuisine in major destinations.
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📚 Books for Travelers | November 9, 2025 📚
Published 5 days ago • 8 min read
November 9, 2025
Greetings!
Greetings from stunning Salerno, the gateway to Pompeii. Below you will find a picture of my view as I type this on the quiet veranda of Ovation’s Solis Restaurant, which I have now dubbed “the office.”
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I began this morning by taking part in the moving Remembrance Sunday service onboard. I read a lovely poem by Marie Cassee. There were several heartfelt remarks by veterans and the descendants of those who fought in the awful world wars of the 20th century. I wish a very peaceful Remembrance Sunday to all taking part today.
It’s been a busy week of writing, speaking, and exploring. Dmitry left for a few days for meetings in the Baltic, so I had lots of time to finish up the last piece for my Malta Bundle: a new 8-Hour Guide to Valletta. This has been a real labor of love: my battered, smudged, and dogeared Field Notes notebook on Valletta will now join others in the archive back in Riga. I’ve very much enjoyed researching Malta, both online and on foot. We have one more visit and overnight there next week, where I plan to do some last visits, enjoy some more delicacies and do a lot of photos and videos. You can access all of the Malta articles here.
The highlight of this week was certainly Portofino. It’s got a very sleepy off-season feel to it, and we were all devastated to learn that George Clooney had been there the previous day, just sitting in the square, drinking coffee. We missed a trick there, somehow.
The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest
Dmitry left the ship for a few days for meetings in Eastern Europe, and just as he left, the blockbuster series on 1066 and the Battle of Hastings, King & Conqueror, finally (finally) dropped on Amazon Prime. The universe was clearly talking to me, so I had a few early nights, binge-watching the first four episodes.
Like any historian, I’m slightly irked by the compression of events, which is necessary for television drama. There are a few incidents I think are invented — one notable one between Edward the Confessor and his mother, the redoubtable Queen Emma of Normandy — but overall, I am impressed. The series sets out to show the affinity of Harald Godwinson and William, Duke of Normandy, presenting them as almost mirror images of each other. I’m halfway in and enjoying it! The acting, sets, and costumes are superb. They filmed much of the series in Iceland, so of course I am delighted by that as well.
The events of 1066 have been on my mind as I prepare a new talk for 2026 called “Stitches in Time” about the Bayeux Tapestry. As I wrote previously in The Bayeux Tapestry Heads to England After 950 Years, there is great excitement over the special exhibition of the tapestry at the British Museum in 2026.
With the tapestry's visit to London imminent, David Musgrove and Michael Lewis's The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest is the perfect book to read if you are planning to see this incomparable 230-foot embroidered chronicle in its temporary British home, or if you want to learn more about the events leading up to the seismic Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest is also a great read if you want to understand the complicated background of the events leading up to 1066.
I relied heavily on The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest to research my new talk on Bayeux Tapestry, which I appreciated the organization of the book, which looks not only at how the tapestry was made but also why it was made. Musgrove and Lewis helped me understand the Bayeux Tapestry is a sophisticated piece of propaganda commissioned likely by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror's half-brother, and used to tell a visual story of the Battle of Hastings and William’s right to rule England.
The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest explains how symbols like halos, banners, and portrayals of specific figures emphasize legitimacy and moral superiority. While William and Harold are portrayed as equals, the tapestry clearly presents William's leadership as superior, underscoring his divine right to the English crown—crucial messaging in the decades following the conquest as William attempted to reconcile his new subjects to Norman rule.
I’ve been lecturing this month on the history of France and enjoying several spirited discussions with guests on board Seabourn Ovation about the life of Marie Antoinette and how we are reexamining her today.
I’ve encouraged guests to do two things: read Antonia Fraser’s magisterial biography: Marie Antoinette: The Journey, which is the definitive account of the life of the doomed French queen.
The other is to visit The Victoria and Albert Museum's Marie Antoinette Style exhibition, running through March 2026, which offers a spectacular gateway into understanding France's most controversial queen. With over 250 years of design, fashion, film, and art on display—from her diamond bracelet clasps to a beaded pink silk slipper, from François Hubert Drouais's 1773 portrait to furniture from her cabinet de toilette at Saint-Cloud—the V&A presents Marie Antoinette as the complex fashion icon she truly was.
It is over 20 years since the publication of Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey, but it is the one I reach for when I’m looking for specific details and just a really satisfying read. Fraser sets out with her characteristic vigorous research to strip away centuries of propaganda and myth to reveal the real woman behind the caricature. Fraser writes with compassion and balance, tracing Marie Antoinette's journey from her Austrian childhood at the court of her redoubtable mother, Empress Maria Theresa, through her arranged marriage at fourteen, to her struggles at Versailles, and ultimately to her role as scapegoat for France's devastating financial crisis during the French Revolution.
Marie Antoinette: The Journey is also a stealth guidebook to Revolutionary Paris itself. The city is layered with Revolutionary history, and understanding Marie Antoinette's story—the actual story, not the myths—provides a crucial context for everything you'll see.
Marie Antoinette's story is ultimately about more than one woman or one revolution. It's about the collision between old systems and new ideas, about the human cost of political upheaval, and about the dangers of scapegoating. These themes remain remarkably relevant today, which is perhaps why her story continues to fascinate us.
River Kings: How a Red Bead Unlocked the Secrets of the Vikings’ Empire
When I lecture about the Viking Age, I always recommend Cat Jarman's River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Road as the book that helps travelers better understand the scope of the Viking Age. There are many excellent books about the Vikings (all of them are on my Scandinavia Reading List), but Jarman’s River Kings does a superb job explaining that the Vikings were not just Scandinavian marauders, they also forged a highly complex, interconnected commercial empire stretching from Greenland to Kyiv.
When you visit the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, explore Reykjavik's Settlement Exhibition, walk through Stockholm's Historiska Museet, or stand before the magnificent rune stones scattered across Denmark and Sweden, you're surrounded by artifacts that tell stories of Norse warriors and seafarers. But this is what most museum labels won't tell you: those Viking raiders were also sophisticated international traders, plying the great river systems of Eastern Europe to the bustling markets of Constantinople and Baghdad.
Jarman's focus in River Kings on the eastern Viking routes—the Swedish Rus who dominated the eastern shores of the Baltic, navigated down the Volga and Dnieper (Dnipro) river systems, portaged their longships between waterways, established the foundations of what would become Kyiv and Novgorod, crossed the Caspian Sea, and ultimately reached Constantinople and the markets of Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate.
This eastern expansion was every bit as significant as the westward voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and North America, yet it receives far less popular attention. The “River Kings" of the title were these intrepid Norse traders—primarily from Sweden but drawing warriors and merchants from across Scandinavia—who transformed the waterways of what is now Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states into highways of commerce connecting the Nordic world to Byzantium and the Islamic world.
If you prefer to consume your history through your ears, The Rest is History crowd has a superb series on the Norman Conquest and the events that led up to the Battle of Hastings. This multi-episode begins here.
We are all tip-toeing around the AI elephant in the room. As a creative worker, I have genuine concerns about AI, which is why this episode of the Mel Robbins show was a crucial listen for me this week. It helped me understand how and when to use AI in the correct and ethical way to streamline my work. Dmitry and I had a very heated debate after I made him listen as well.
I’m very excited to visit Carthage next week! In preparation, I re-listened to this excellent episode on the Origins of Carthage from The Ancients, which was a superb refreshment.
We sail onward! This is my last segment of a 40-day voyage on board Ovation, and it continues to be very enjoyable. I’m excited to return to Malta, Lipari, and Trapani, as well as the visit to Carthage! I’ll report on all of that next week in the next edition of the Destination Curation Newsletter!
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I am a food and travel writer as well as a cruise ship enrichment speaker: my passion is exploring the cuisine, history, and culture of new places and writing about them here in my free bi-weekly (twice monthly) Destination Curation newsletter where I look at the intersection of history, culture, and cuisine in major destinations.
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