Love books, will travel – How literary tours are building real-life adventure

What would you give to live in your favorite fictional world for a week?

Growing up, readers saw themselves reflected in Percy Jackson, the Rick Riordan character who didn’t feel like he belonged until he found his place among the children of Greek gods. Now as adults, some of those readers found their community wandering the same ancient ruins that inspired the series, completing quests and making new friends just as Percy did at Camp Half-Blood.

On EF Ultimate Break’s new line of BookTok-inspired international tours, I joined 30 strangers and traveled to Cairo, Athens and Rome to learn the real history and mythology that inspired Riordan’s entire Camp Half-Blood Chronicles series.

The tour represents two key trends in the book world: a growing literary tourism market and the desire to connect with like-minded people in real life.

When we set out on our first day in Egypt, we only knew we had our fandom in common. By the final night of our trip in Rome, we shed tears, signed translated book copies and promised regular FaceTime dates. 

New EF Ultimate Break tours bring BookTok community offline

Literary tourism can include traveling to literary destinations, opting for guided tours built around books, author events and book conventions. Readers can ride the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter in Scotland, or travel to Prince Edward Island for an "Anne of Green Gables" tour. The Nantucket Hotel in Massachusetts offers a year-round "Elin Hilderbrand" package and The Hemingway Home and Museum in Florida has almost 60 six-toed cats descended from one of Ernest's own cats, Snow White. It is expected to be valued at over $3.3 billion in 2034, up from almost $2.3 billion in 2024, according to Future Market Insights.

This Percy Jackson trip, like many of the Ultimate Break book inspired tours, was helmed by an influencer who helps market the trip to followers and bridge the gap between the book and the destination.

Zoë Mahler, a longtime series fan who runs the social media platform and NYC-based book club @nycbookhoe, oversaw the Percy Jackson trip, which filled up within three days of her video about it went viral. EF has already added another tour for this fall. 

According to Alyssa Sands, director of market development at EF, the idea for the bookish tours came from seeing the fervor and devotion of fandoms on TikToK.

“We had a solid crew of colleagues internally that have just become big fans of BookTok. They could see these incredible communities forming around genres and novels,” Sands says. “There's a really neat opportunity to connect with these readers and help them explore different parts of the world, places that may have … inspired destinations in different novels.”

Base cost for the trip is about $3,500 and includes accommodations, country-to-country travel while on the tour and some meals. Having EF book your tour arrival and departure flights may add up to an additional $1,400. Excursions like boat cruises and pasta-making classes can run $65-$175 each. Additional costs include meals on your own, souvenirs and tipping your tour guides. But from there, the logistics and planning are in the tour guide’s hands. 

The inaugural Percy Jackson crew was a varied bunch. Mahler and I were the only two who worked full-time in books. Others worked aboard freight boats, as museum educators, teachers, TV advertisers, vet techs, bankers, construction superintendents and nurses. There were two married couples, two high school best friends, a pair of twin brothers and three members of Mahler’s book club. The rest were perfect strangers.  

In interviews on the last night of the trip, many attendees agreed that knowing everyone was a Percy Jackson fan on day one was disarming. It didn’t feel so hard to make new friends when you always had books to fall back on in conversation. And if you didn’t want to talk about the series specifically, you could at least talk about what book you were currently reading.

For Katie Guttenberg, 25, the Percy Jackson fandom is a way of life. The series is the reason they studied Latin and classical civilizations in school. They wrote their college entrance essay about the series. 

“I’ve been scared to travel on my own, and this was a great introduction to that,” Guttenberg says. “Reading is such a solitary experience. And you get to truly live it out, you get to talk to other people about what you love and what makes you who you are.”

Reliving the ‘childhood wonder’ of your favorite book series 

While we mostly learned about the real history behind the ancient sites so central to the books, there was also trivia, quests with cabins based on our godly “parents” and skits to perform. It felt like the best parts of summer camp. It also felt as close as we’d ever get to being demigods ourselves.

“Getting to relive that childhood wonder of what books can bring to you is really magical,” says Sydney Correia, 28. “As an adult, you don't think you'd find that again.”

For Mahler, working with EF to add Percy-specific elements was a crucial part of pre-departure planning. Even while on the trip, Mahler and our tour guide Mayia worked behind the scenes to get us to the Temple of Poseidon even though it wasn’t on our original itinerary.

“They're very aware of the fact that book people are passionate nerds and providing that space to let people do that,” Mahler says. “Our tour guides had read the books and worked it into our tours, which was great.”

Mahler studied abroad in Greece and Italy in college, but returning to those places with real ancient history nerds was “so different immediately.”

“We all have that similar childhood nostalgia for something that we still haven't experienced,” Mahler says.

Forget doing Rome as the Romans do. These booklovers wanted to walk the Italian streets like Percy and Annabeth. Mahler recalls a conversation between trip-goers about finding the exact parking lot where the characters fell into Tartarus in “The Mark of Athena.”

“When do you have 31 people in a group saying, ‘I want to go to this parking lot in Rome’?” Mahler says.

Finding community just as Percy did at Camp Half-Blood

Ansley Bowman, 22, grew up loving Greek mythology but had no one to connect with about it. She’s always wanted to travel, but couldn’t get trips off the ground with her friend group. When she saw she could combine the two, a trip abroad finally felt doable.

Bowman faced the pre-trip jitters that many of the other attendees echoed. In the days leading up, she wasn’t sure if she’d get on that flight. Ten days later, she was snapping pictures of the matching Percy Jackson tattoos she designed for fellow attendees and making plans to stay in touch. 

"It's really important to try and find communities who like the same things as you," Bowman says. "It really gives you a passion for life and learning."

It also gave fans a space to “nerd out” more than they could back home.  

Gianni Edmister, 26, brought his twin brother and two other friends on the trip, one whom he met while serving in the Army. He found so much more to bond over than just Percy Jackson, like Renaissance Fairs and Star Wars. 

“I think the biggest highlight for this trip was finding the nerd of nerds. Being comfortable and just truly rejoicing in that and embracing it is a big thing for me,” Edmister says. “Finding that identity of like, OK, this is my group, this is my pack.”

Jeanpierre Edmister, his brother, says the two bonded over mythology as kids. He remembers playing with homemade tridents in the backyard and pretending to be gods in the ocean when they visited the lake. Now, living several states apart, they get to reunite over that common interest.

His favorite part of the trip was the quests, which included finding proof of the gods at the Acropolis and scavenger hunts in the streets of Rome. On the final night, our last task was to act out scenes from Greek mythology.

“We didn’t become demigods or gods, but I think we became humans and that was kind of even cooler,” Jeanpierre says. 

The reporter on this story received access from EF Ultimate Break. USA TODAY maintains editorial control of content.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].