European Holiday 2025 - London, England - Part 1

My wife and I are currently at Heathrow Airport, about to depart the UK.  We've spent seven days here, four of which were with family and friends.  The other three were spent sightseeing, relaxing, and of course book hunting.

After visiting several London bookstores my biggest surprise was how many Jonathan Capes (especially first editions) and John Gardner proofs were available for purchase within just a short distance of our hotel in Covent Garden.  We are certainly not this fortunate in Oz !

The first bookstore we found featuring Jonathan Cape hardbacks was Goldsboro Books on Cecil Court.  The very friendly staff even let me hold their first edition of Ian Fleming's "Live And Let Die".  Although it was my first visit to this store, I've purchased numerous modern first editions from them in the past.  I definitely recommend a visit to this store and checking out their limited edition hardbacks online.

Next bookstore was Peter Harrington Rare Books, where again I found everyone to be extremely helpful.  Despite immediately explaining I was only there to visit the store and check out what was available as I probably couldn't afford to buy anything, both my wife and I felt very welcome.

As you can see in the following photos, they had some lovely books for sale which also appear to be shown on their website.

Hatchards on Piccadilly was the third store.  They also had several secondhand Jonathan Capes behind the front counter.   I was fortunate to find a signed paperback edition of "A Spy Like Me" by Kim Sherwood on their shelves too.  This copy was published by Hemlock Press.

We did visit a fourth bookshop who allowed me to take these photos within their store but didn't want any promotion explaining "We'll handle our own promotions thankyou !".  As you can see they had plenty of Capes for sale as well as many vintage paperbacks.  I won't mention the store's name or location though to respect their wishes.

Sadly my holiday budget didn't extend as far as purchasing any of the Jonathan Capes shown, but in the next blog post you'll note I did manage to purchase a recently published hardback while also in London.

And finally, here's some photos of London:

Tower Bridge

Inside the Tower of London including a resident raven

Piccadilly Circus

European Holiday 2025 - Bergen, Norway

My wife and I loved Bergen.  It probably didn't hurt that the journey to get there (see previous post) was the most amazing train/bus journey I have ever experienced.  The views as we travelled through the mountain region of Hardangervidda National Park were a highlight, with snow and ice covering the ground despite the Summer Sun in the sky.  We even stopped for a few minutes at Finse which featured on the big screen as the planet Hoth in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back".

Our hotel in Bergen was located on the historic harbour opposite the picturesque Bryggen.  After checking in and grabbing some dinner from a Norwegian hamburger shop ("Holy Cow") we walked around the dock to the UNESCO world heritage site with its bright coloured buildings and triangular shaped roofs.

While exploring the area and entering many of the shops, we suddenly realised that despite the deceptively beautiful blue sky above, and the many other tourists around us, the time was actually 11pm !  That was a strange experience.

The next morning it was time to explore.  We found this telephone box containing a community library beside the harbour.

We also found a Nitri book store as we had in Oslo.  Such a well presented store.  I couldn't find any James Bond titles however they did have an Agatha Christie book display which included a companion book to her novels in which you could fill in the details of each crime novel you read such as the synopsis, the victim and the killer(s).  This might be an interesting idea to duplicate for the James Bond novels.

On the opposite side of Strandgaten was Ark Beyer.  Like Nitri we were already familiar with the Ark chain from Oslo.  A lovely, well laid out book store with friendly and helpful staff.

Near the harbour was Outland Bergen, a massive pop-culture store selling everything from games to collectables figures.  They also had a large collection of books for sale which were mostly sci-fi, fantasy and anime.  Regardless I couldn't find many James Bond items available, but with the last Bond film "No Time To Die" having been released in 2021 it's probably not a surprise.

A little further away were two other book stores, Boksalongen Bokhandel...

... and Litteraturhuset.  Both of these book stores were in the midst of a literary event where authors spoke.  However as the event was in Norwegian language we didn't partake.

And finally, when we were at Bergen airport and sadly about to leave, we encountered another Ark bookstore.  Yes, they did have a copy of Anthony Horowitz's latest Bond novel "With A Mind To Kill".  A bookstore in Europe at the moment wouldn't be complete without one !

Here's some non-book related photos from our time in wonderful Bergen:

View of the historic harbour and Bryggen from our hotel room window (when I held my phone out far enough).  Note the blue sky despite this photo being taken at 2am when I woke and decided to see if the Sun had set yet

View of Bergen after travelling the funicular up a mountain close by.  On this day we caught up with a lovely American couple, Pete and Deb, who we'd first met on our way by tram to Frogner and Vigeland Park in Oslo

We also went for a hike with Pete and Deb atop the mountain, and proceeded to get lost on one of the short hiking trails.  But we had a lovely afternoon, the weather was brilliant, the views were impressive and the company was great

Some stairs at one of the Bryggen buildings.  I'm not sure Health and Safety officials in Australia would allow these stairs to still be used, but Norway seems to be a lot more common sense in their approach to laws

And some random photos from Bergen, with the last two taken at the airport