4 Media Inspired Locations I Want To Visit

Ever read a book or seen a movie and thought "Wow! Now that is a place I simple have to visit!"? For me that happens a lot! Unfortunately, I can't think of any place I've actually travelled to that was inspired by the media. Usually I just visit local spots nearby or places that other people in my life want to visit.

Anyway, the following are places that various forms of media have inspired me to plan my future travels around…

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1. Wilmington, NC

When I was in high school, Dawson's Creek was the show I was obsessed with. Everyone watched it, and no one admitted to watching it. I mean it was probably looked down on just as much then as it is now. (Maybe it's looked down on even moreso now?) Anyway, the show inspired me to find a group of friends I could be close to – people who were like family, people who would inspire me to try new things and be there for me any time I needed them.

Around this time, my parents were planning to go on vacation. Uninterested in being away from my friends, I decided to take over the planning for myself. If you can't beat it, join it? I think the original plan was to sit on some beach in Florida for a week. Yuck. Without much real effort, I managed to turn that vacation on it's head and suggested a drive along the coast. We would visit Savannah (GA), Hilton Head (SC), and Charleston (SC). Of course my original plan had us moving up the coast toward Wilmington, NC, but instead when we decided to plan the trip "by ear", Wilmington was cut. We found ourselves enjoying Charleston far more than we anticipated.

While I'm not sure if there is any real reason for me to visit Wilmington, NC now, I might still do it just to say that I have. I've only ever experienced the mountains of NC, never the beach. Perhaps it's worth a view? … Then again, maybe not. There's only one way to find out!

2. Cypress Gardens in Charleston, SC

You guys, this scene. :)

First of all, I have to say, if you've never been to Charleston or Florida, this is exactly what the weather is like in the summer. One minute it's perfectly sunny, then it starts raining. The rain lasts maybe 10 minutes? You get drenched and the water is up to your knees. Then it stops just like it started and it's sunny the rest of the afternoon (or for at least 10 minutes). I promise – the weather is crazy there! ;)

And because of that (and the humidity), I have yet to set foot in the beautiful Cypress Gardens. I only live about 7 hours away, you'd think I'd have gone by now.

One day… :)

See some other locations from The Notebook here.

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3. Saint-Malo in northern France

Have you seen my review of All The Light We Cannot See? Basically, it was one of the best books I read last year – a beautiful novel depicting the lives of two ordinary European children whose lives are completely turned upside down with the onset of the second world war.

Supposedly, the inspiration for All The Light We Cannot See began, in part, when the author was on a book tour visiting Saint-Malo, France. While I may have had the desire to visit a beautiful beach on the coast of France, after reading Doerr's descriptions in his book, I knew that Saint-Malo would be the first I would visit should I ever get the chance.

Here is Anthony Doerr's description of Saint-Malo which was used in Scribner Magazine:

I first saw Saint-Malo while I was on book tour in France. It’s a ghostly, imperious walled city in Brittany, surrounded by emerald green sea on all four sides. It was night, and after dinner I went for a stroll on top of the ramparts, peering into the third-floor windows of houses, the low-tide beaches glimmering in moonlight, the town glowing. I felt as if I was walking through a city plucked from the imagination of Italo Calvino, a place that was part fairy-tale castle, part M. C. Escher drawing, part mist and ocean wind and lamplight. You walk its cobbled lanes, you smell the tides, you hear the echoes of your footsteps, and you think: this city has survived for well over a thousand years. But Saint-Malo was almost entirely destroyed by American artillery in 1944, in the final months of World War II, and was painstakingly put back together, block by granite block, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That a place could so thoroughly hide its own incineration, and that my own country was responsible for that incineration, fascinated me. 

And finally,

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4. Prince Edward Island, Canada

Because after seeing the movies inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery's books, you cannot unsee the beautiful Canadian landscape.

What movie or book inspired locations are you hoping to someday visit? Are there any that you have already been to?