Travelling: visiting bookstores abroad

Hi everybody!

Here I am to talk to you about travelling. Today I decided to talk about bookshops (yes, I am so freak that when I travel I must visit at least one bookshop).

As I told you in some reviews, when I travel, I buy a book in each country as a souvenir. This had helped me to find bookshops huge and famous, and others not so well-known but very quaint.

• HELSINKI

Akateeminen kirjakaupa (Pohjoisesplanadi 39, Helsinki)
It is not an unusual bookshop, but it is my favourite one in the whole Helsinki. They have every book you can think about (I even found the Kalevala in English, that I couldn’t find in any other bookshop). It has 3 floors and books in lots of languages.

 

• STOCKHOLM

Science Fiction Bokhandeln (Västerlånggatan 48, Stockholm)

Each time I visit Stockolm (I was there twice haha) I stop by this shop. It is full of geek and freak stuff as mugs, merchandising, as you can see in the pictures, there are huge figures of Alien. Besides, it is full of books in Swedish and in English. It is a bit expensive, but it worth to stop by and get lost among the shelves.

• TALLINN

Raamatukoi (Harju 1a, Tallinn)

When I visited Tallinn, I had to admit that I didn’t know about the existence of this bookshop, I look for another shop that, actually, was permanently closed. When we went to the tourist office (it is close by) it started to rain a lot, so we went inside this shop to shelter from the rain. It turned out to be bigger than we thought, and it was full of books, as in paradise. Besides, a lot of them was secondhand books. But most of them were written in Estonian.

• LONDRES

Hatchards (187 Piccadilly, St James’s, London)

After having gone all over almost every bookshop in London, I was looking for a specific book, and the last day of my vacances I was at Piccadilly Circus and I look up in google where is the closest open bookshop (Waterstones was closed), Hatchards came up. It is the oldest library of London (since 1797), they have inside an old elevator and about 4 o 5 floors where you can get lost (I did indeed) among the millions of books and shelves. It has also the appointment to the Queen, which means that they provide the Royal House with books. Considering all of that, I thought that the book I bought was going to cost me a lot, but the price was reasonable, far cheaper than its price in Spain!

• EDINBURGH

Waterstones (128 Prince St, West End, Edinburgh)

It is right in the Princes St, so it is not so difficult to see it. It is great, it has 3 o 4 floors divided by the theme of the books. It is a bit expensive, I pay around 35€ for two books (crying). But it has stunning views of the Edinburgh castle, for sure!

• COPENHAGEN

Boghallen (Rådhuspladsen 37, København)

This bookshop is huge, it also has two or three floors and is full of all kind of books. I bought there a great edition of Virginia Woolf (designed by Marimekko) and the first book of my collection Penguin Little Black Classics. It is a bit expensive (especially because of the change of currency) but it has a great variety of books.

• PARIS

Shakespeare and Company (37 Rue de la Bûcherie, Paris)

This is probably my favourite bookshop of all the ones that I have visited.

It is “hide”, nearby Notre Dame, it is small, but once you come inside you feel the magic. Although it was opened in 1951, it takes us to the intellectual Paris of the 19th century, right in the Latin Quarter. Though taking photos is forbidden, I took a picture of the stairs because they were beautiful. And the second floor… It has an out of tune piano and they invite you to play it, and you have sofas/chairs to sit down to read. Quaint and charming.

-SARU