The 36 Hours column, The New York Times’ beloved bite-sized travel guide to (bite-sized) visits to places both well-trafficked and off the beaten path, is one of the best tools for today’s global citizens. Find yourself in Dallas with a few hours to kill on a business trip? Considering adding a Saigon leg to your big Hanoi trip? Cousin Larry dragging you to a destination wedding in Mallorca? 36 Hours is a good place to turn.

But, of course, not all of our travel needs necessarily arise when we’re travelling. Much of my favourite recent flights of fancy have happened on the couch, while leafing through books that will inspire the next trip, and the next. The Times has anticipated this, too, with the third edition of its collected 36 Hours Europe, soon to be available from Taschen. We took the occasion of the new book’s release to pick out our favourite places from their collection – and maybe book a little getaway or two when no one’s looking.

As someone slightly, vaguely interested in fraternal orders and the occult-like weirdness that goes on within them, I’m more than a little keen to visit Malta, seat of the Knights of Malta, obviously – a group that, over the years, has claimed among its membership Mr Sammy Davis Jr. Sold! Also, Malta is where Mr Robert Altman filmed Popeye, and the set – as well as the amusement park it was converted to – still stands.

Having only read Ms Rebecca West’s great saga about the Balkans, Black Lamb And Grey Falcon – and everything by the Bosnian-American writer Mr Aleksandar Hemon – my understanding of Belgrade is purely literary-historical. And that is no way to live while we’re still allowed to burn jet fuel the way we do.

This is almost unfair. The Amalfi Coast is my favourite place in the world (isn’t it everyone’s?) I can’t wait to get back to Le Sirenuse, to bop around Mr Gore Vidal’s amazing Ravello villa and pretend like I’m one of the sordid characters in Mr John Huston’s Beat The Devil — all while practically drowning in the grapefruit-sized lemons and San Marzano tomatoes grown in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Meet you there.

The New York Times 36 Hours Europe (Taschen) by Ms Barbara Ireland is available to pre-order now