East of Eden is set in California's Salinas Valley, mostly between the start of the twentieth century and the end of World War I, and its places are Salinas, King City and the farmland between them. The 1955 James Dean film moved the story to Monterey on screen but was shot largely in Mendocino, with scenes in Spreckels and the valley.
This route follows John Steinbeck's novel through the valley, Kate's town of Salinas and the film's locations, so you can see where the story and the screen version happen.
The Easter Rising of April 1916 was fought across central Dublin, from the General Post Office on O'Connell Street to the Royal College of Surgeons on St Stephen's Green and the canal at Mount Street Bridge.
This route follows the week from the muster at Liberty Hall and the seizure of City Hall to the surrender from Moore Street and the executions at Kilmainham Gaol. Several stops can be visited today.
The Handmaid's Tale was filmed in Toronto, Hamilton and Cambridge, Ontario: the Waterford house, the hanging wall at Mill Race Park and the Royal York's Jezebel's stand in for Gilead and Boston.
The route follows the first season in order: the Waterford house, the Red Center, June's flashback at Ripley's Aquarium, the wall, the Main Street Bridge, the Grand Café, the Lower Bay subway, the handmaids lined up at LIUNA Station and the banquet at the Royal York.
Quantum of Solace films its revenge chase in real places: the lakeside road at Malcesine, the rooftops and Palio crowd of Siena, the floating opera stage at Bregenz, the docks of Colón, a tower at Talamone and the Atacama Desert. Bond follows Mr White from Lake Garda to Siena, then Greene through Haiti, Austria and Bolivia, with Panama standing in for both Haiti and Bolivia and Chile for the Bolivian desert.
The route follows the film's order, from the opening car chase on Lake Garda to the snowy epilogue in Kazan. Some stops are exact filming sites, some are stand-ins: Panama's Colón and Panama City play Haiti and Bolivia, the Residencia at Paranal plays Greene's desert hotel, and Kazan is really Aldershot. The Water Gardens in London and the barracks are private or military, so they are map stops rather than visits.
Fionn mac Cumhaill is the hero of Irish legend who gained all knowledge by burning his thumb on a salmon, saved Tara from a fire-breather and, in folk tales, built the Giant's Causeway to reach a Scottish rival. His stories are tied to real hills, rivers and rocks, many of them still named for him.
The route follows his legend from the Boyne of his boyhood through Tara, the Hill of Allen, Slieve Gullion and Benbulben, then to the tall tales of Lough Neagh, the Causeway and Fingal's Cave. Nothing here is history: pins mark where tradition places each tale.
John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps sends Richard Hannay from a flat behind London's Langham Place onto the 7.10 from St Pancras and north to Galloway's Cairnsmore of Fleet and the spa town of Moffat, while a German spy ring hunts him. Hannay has three weeks to survive before he can warn the government. The title comes from a real stair in Broadstairs: 78 steps, not 39.
This is John Buchan's 1915 novel, not Hitchcock's very different film. London, St Pancras, Cairnsmore of Fleet and Moffat are named in the book; Hannay's hiding places on the moors and the Kent resort of Bradgate are not real, but the steps that gave the book its title are.
Mrs Dalloway unfolds in one June day across Westminster, St James's Park, Piccadilly's Hatchards bookshop and Regent's Park. Big Ben marks the hours for Clarissa, preparing her party, and for Septimus, a war veteran; the two never meet.
This route follows the characters through the London they walk, almost all of it still standing. The Dalloways' house, the florist and the doctors are fictional.
Ernest Shackleton set out in 1914 to cross Antarctica on foot. He never even landed. His ship, Endurance, was trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, drifted for ten months and was crushed and sunk, leaving 28 men on the ice with three lifeboats. What followed — months on drifting floes, a landing on Elephant Island, an 800-mile voyage in an open boat and a march across the mountains of South Georgia — ended with every one of them coming home alive.
The route follows that escape from South Georgia to the wreck and back, with dates from Shackleton's own account, South. Most of these places can only be reached by expedition ship.
