A different sort of Christmas scent

I have no idea how this deodorant came to be in my bathroom cupboard. I discovered it while rummaging through various baskets looking - in vain, it turned out - for the replacement roll-on I thought I had laid away ready. I stopped buying aerosol deodorant many, many years ago because of the CFC thing, so that's the first bit of the mystery. There is a clue, though, in the size of this container: it's very small, which suggests it was complimentary. Plus, of course, it's German. 

I haven't been anywhere German-speaking for ages. The last time was just before Christmas 2014, when I did a cruise with Uniworld up the Danube from Budapest. They threw us travel writer freeloaders unceremoniously off the boat halfway through the trip, so we missed out on the highlight of sailing through the Wachau Valley, with its hills, castles and vineyards, and on towards Passau and beyond. Instead, we were mini-bussed back to Vienna to fly home. It had been lovely up till that point, though - despite every day being seriously cold and grey. It was an education in understanding why Christmas in Europe is so much more Christmassy than it is here downunder, with our summer holiday distractions that include, notably, summer. When it's that grey and grim, you really need things like mulled wine, gingerbread and market stalls draped in coloured lights.

Vienna was actually my first introduction to the European Christmas, way back in 1987, when we went from England to Austria. Vienna was certainly gorgeous, but even better was Salzburg, where we spent the actual Christmas Day - plus, more to the point, Christmas Eve, which is more important than the 25th, dinner-wise. We'd got a bit anxious in the preceding days, seeing menus that all focused on the traditional Karpfen - carp, the fish, an everyday fish at that, unlike salmon, say. 

Anyway, we turned up at our Vier Jahreseiten hotel restaurant on the evening of the 24th, dressed up, with our presents, just as all the locals were, picked up the menu - and oh! What a relief! Main course: Englisches Roastbeef! 

Earlier that evening, we'd been to a service in the cathedral, quite a casual affair with a lot of coming and going, and then afterwards trailed behind everyone else to the cemetery, where people were putting wreaths and candles on family graves, and singing along to a live accompaniment of violins and cornets. That was wonderfully atmospheric. Christmas Day itself was anticlimactic - so ordinary that we hired a car and went for a drive, looking for snow and, after deciding that it was cheating to pretend a frosty spruce tree would do, found the real thing on top of a peak that we went up in a gondola.  

It was a lovely Christmas. Which is not to say it's not equally lovely to look out of the window and see this sort of thing:

(None of which, of course, solves the mystery of the German deodorant.)

Sad in Seoul

Oh dear. I've just woken up here in Seoul, and heard on RNZ radio news about the sightseeing boat sunk on the Danube in the centre of Budapest, after a collision with the Viking Sigyn, killing seven South Korean tourists, with 21 still missing, currently. That's a bunch of connections I'd rather not have had.

I've both done a similar sightseeing cruise in Budapest - during the day, up the river, under those impressive bridges, past the magnificent Parliament building, possibly even in the Mermaid itself, it's entirely possible - and also begun a Danube cruise there on a river boat like the one that hit the smaller vessel. My cruise was with Avalon, but Viking is a company I'm familiar with, having recently had a few days on board one of their ocean cruisers, Viking Sun, from Auckland to Wellington. I can so very easily imagine it all happening - that is one busy river. And also one that has seen so much human tragedy, much of it caused by people, just like today.

Of course the local news on TV is all over it - all the passengers were from South Korea - and everyone here will be shocked and saddened. What a horrific thing to happen. I'm so sorry.

Encore une fois à Paris.

Having emerged, finally, from the annual dark, deep, soul-sucking morass of preparing my tax return, with its habitual bitter self-recrimination and usual empty promises about doing better next time, it was a small but pleasing reward to fall upon this mille-feuille. It's not the real thing, but it's pretty close and, even more pleasing, it's a promise of better to come: this time next week I'll be in Paris.

This will  be my fourth? fifth? time there in the last four years, which is excellent going, even if they were all pretty fleeting visits. This one will be, too: a day and a half before setting off on an Avalon cruise down the Seine to Normandy and back again, and then off next morning on the train to London. Having done a Uniworld cruise along the Danube (sorry) in November, I'm keen to see how Avalon compares. I did have 5 days on the Panorama's maiden voyage, but that was some years ago now and really it was hard to judge the feel of the boat, given that everyone was new on board.

I do remember that the suite is bigger, and better arranged, so that you can lie in bed and look out of the huge window beyond your feet rather than craning your neck sideways. And yes, I do realise how decadent it is to be even giving thought to such things - but, you know, it's an industry that employs lots of people and makes an increasing amount of money for its investors, so it's not all self-indulgent frippery - it has economic value. (My attendance at this week's CLIA report meeting was not wasted.)

And it's also so very pleasant a way to travel. This time there will be Monet and Van Gogh, Napoleon and the Normandy landing beaches, and calvados. Plus wine and cheeses, pretty little towns, patisseries, cats, cafes and cathedrals. Excellent! Also, though, a grand finale Paris tour of all the usual suspects, which I now feel are sufficiently familiar not to need to see again - not quite so soon, anyway.

So I'm asking for advice here. Where and/or what is something a bit different, quirky possibly, interesting, colourful, which would give me something to talk (write) about? Come on, I know I have some regular French readers here. Break your silence! Please share your inside knowledge? Merci beaucoup.

Hungary for salted caramel icecream?

Good Friday, sunshine, people on the beach and in the water making the most of the last of summer before the clocks go back tomorrow, gulls squabbling over the stinky fish frame on the sand nearby, and I'm eating an icecream bar and thinking about Budapest at Christmas. Magnums are made in Hungary, it turns out. Who knew? Seems like a coals-to-Newcastle scenario, but that's what the packaging says.

And of course I was in Budapest shortly before last Christmas - not that long ago, to judge by the 'Season's Greetings' sign on the window of the local dairy here, above a candle picture still bright and unsmudged (well, after all, I guess Easter is a season too). To be honest, it was pretty dismal when we arrived - it didn't help that we'd had a stop-off in Dubai where it was 30 degrees - and stepping out of the airport was like entering a fridge. Except colder, at one degree, and wetter, and greyer. There were few people on the streets, everything looked dull, and there was no colour anywhere. Even the famous Christmas markets, the whole purpose of our visit, were unattractive.

I really felt for the stall-holders, having to sit crouched in their little huts all day, muffled up in gloves and beanies as stragglers shuffled by, hands in pockets, mostly looking and not buying. Then I went back to the boat, Uniworld's River Beatrice, that I'd be cruising the Danube in for the next five days, and my room was like an icebox, the heater pumping out cold air. It was hard to get enthusiastic.

But then the maintenance guy fixed the heater and I thawed out, it got dark, I put on some extra layers and went out again, and it was all different. The wet cobbles reflected the lights of the decorations on the stalls, on the big Christmas tree in the square and over the boarded-up fountain, the stalls were pumping out delicious smells of fried food and mulled wine and cider, the high tables in the middle were buzzing with local office workers celebrating the end of their working day with a sociable drink and a snack, families with little kids were hanging over the wooden fence of the life-sized nativity scene, oohing over the real sheep and goat. The buildings were floodlit, the market atmosphere was welcoming, it was bright and colourful under a black sky, the goods and crafts on the stalls looked so attractive, and I was really glad to be there in winter, when it felt so special.

(As for that salted caramel flavour - well, it was nothing like they do in New England. But that's another connection entirely...)

Seventy years on

I suppose the sun does shine at Auschwitz. Of course it does. But, having been there on an entirely appropriate cold, grey day, it's hard to imagine it in the sunshine, the red bricks glowing warmly, 'Arbeit Macht Frei' silhouetted against a blue sky.

I was struck, though, by how neat and tidy it was, by the row of young poplar trees in front of the buildings, how well-maintained it all seemed. Perhaps it's a mark of respect by the Germans, who to their credit keep this shameful part of their history open to everyone, for free - or perhaps it was always like that, a kind of orderly balance to the nightmarish things that went on there. It's true that there was a kind of disconnect that went on, men doing hideous things and then going home to their wives and children, living normal family lives.

We marvel at that, but it's important to remember that it's not solely a German characteristic: it's what all people are capable of, and you don't have to look far inside any current newspaper to find proof of that. The world has never been so connected, so conscious of events, so comprehensively informed by affected individuals as well as commentators - and yet it's still clearly entirely possible for some groups to dismiss others as not just not like them, but not even human, worse than worthless.

So visiting Auschwitz, and Budapest's House of Terror, and Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi, which I have, and so many other similar places in Cambodia, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, which I haven't, is necessary. Travel shouldn't just be about good times, it should always be about learning, and understanding, and remembering. That's why they say it broadens the mind - and, if nothing else, the Holocaust came about because of narrow, blinkered thinking.

Goodbye to Budapest

The decorations on the Christmas tree were trembling. Otherwise, there was little to show for our being underway, once we'd cleared the city's floodlit bridges and buildings. The River Beatrice set off this evening at 6pm from Budapest, next stop tomorrow noon at Bratislava - where, according to the Captain, it will also be raining.

It was at least gentle, vertical rain - unlike Auckland's - so my umbrella did a decent job of keeping most of me dry. Gazing upwards like a tourist, though, did mean that I stepped several times into surprisingly deep puddles - but, dutiful as ever, I ploughed on.

In the morning I took the city tour with Barbara, a lovely local with an English accent and a sense of humour much drier than the weather. We did the usual circuit - Andrassy Avenue, House of Terror, Heroes Square (shining wet and empty), over the river to Matthias Church (warm and colourful) and then to our first Christmas market back in Pest. It was a good start: lovely, unique crafts and tempting food and mulled wine, chocolates and pastries. Pretty, colourful, smelt good - I liked it.

Up Andrassy Avenue I popped into the Book Cafe, where they sell both wine and books - what a civilised combination - and where upstairs there's a gorgeous Art Deco cafe where waiters with trays whisk between the tables, reflected in huge mirrors, and beneath an ornate ceiling. There are a lot of bookshops in Budapest, I noticed, always a good sign, and proper ones too, like libraries.

Things got more serious at the Grand Synagogue where I walked past a garden containing the remains of more than 2,000 unnamed Jews who died of cold or starvation in the last years of the war, "a memorial to an era when all human feeling was lost". Upstairs there's a small but intense Holocaust Museum with photos of the ghetto, the dispossessed, the victims. In the garden outside names are engraved on the lower leaves of a stainless steel sculpture of a weeping willow tree.

The rain continued to fall and the only way to keep warm - other than being sensible and civilised,
and going into one of the many inviting-looking cafes (but that would have taken money, and I had no forints) - was to keep walking briskly, so it didn't take that long to get to the lovely covered market, all coloured tiles outside and high ceiling inside. It's a proper market and full of local touches: plaits of chilli peppers on the vegetable stalls, lots of pork (including heads and trotters) at the butchers', paprika in every imaginable form.

And then I was back at the boat, and that was it for Budapest: colder, wetter and gloomier than I was hoping, but still with enough interest, pleasure and delight to please those who have never seen the city's summer face. And, after all, it is December now.

Back in Budapest

The last time I was in Budapest, I arrived by train and left by coach; this time, I've come by plane and will leave on a boat, which is kind of satisfying. There were a lot of snowy mountains (including Ararat, above) on the 6-hour flight from Dubai but here it's just damp and grey and gloomy. And cold, one degree C, which is chillier than my fridge back home. It's not the sort of weather that does any city any favours, and I'm glad to have seen Budapest in summertime, as a balance to its rather forbidding face right now.

My home for the next four nights will be Uniworld's River Beatrice, which is a fairly new river cruiser catering for 130 passengers, most of them it seems American Baby Boomers. My cabin is neat, plush, comfortable and a touch on the cramped side, but since there's only me in it, and I expect to be out most of the time, it hardly matters. There are much bigger suites just along the corridor, I couldn't help but notice...

Arriving at midday jet-lagged after an early start, though, I didn't do a great deal beyond settling in and getting my bearings. We're moored near the green Liberty Bridge, across the river from the Gellert thermal baths and the castle on the hilltop of Buda. Here on the Pest side, the yellow trams trundle past, there are other river cruisers, sight-seeing boats and floating restaurants and bars lining the bank and, despite the weather, quite a lot of other tourists shuffling along, hands in pockets.

I was one of them, regretting leaving my scarf on the boat, tripping over the cobbles as I followed the bank towards the Houses of Parliament. My goal was a memorial I'd read about only after my last visit: Shoes on the bank of the Danube. It's an installation of 60 cast-iron pairs of assorted 1940s shoes, a memorial to all the Jews lined up beside the river in 1944-45, and shot by the Arrow Cross - a Hungarian fascist group with Nazi-style beliefs. Their victims had to remove their shoes first, because they were a commodity during the war, but the people of course were expendable, and the Danube was a handy way of disposing of the bodies.

It's a grim bit of history, and the worn, battered shoes - men's, women's, children's - speak volumes, arranged untidily along a section of the bank. Flowers and flickering candles gave the rusty brown shoes some colour, but it was a literally chilling sight that was perfectly suited by the greyness of the day.

High and low

Yes, yes, it's the essence of a First World Problem - but that doesn't change the fact that it's very hard to pack for a trip where the destinations are currently registering 30 degrees Celsius, and a scant 3. That's Dubai, and Budapest - Auckland, FYI, is right now a balmy 19 degrees, which feels just right, so that's no help. Really, as far as this sort of thing goes, the best time, packing-wise, to travel to the opposite hemisphere is either spring or autumn, when you're already wearing the clothes you want to take. (That's not allowing for that broad band around the middle of the planet, mind, where things just get silly.) Otherwise, you have to use imagination, which is not my forte.

So, tomorrow I'm heading for Dubai in the sybaritic luxury of Business class on Emirates' A380 (for free, which will maybe mitigate somewhat the pain of having recently had to PAY for flights with them to Turkey next year, an eye-watering sum that was undercut three days later by $600 on a special offer from Singapore Airlines. Still hurting). On my last couple of trips to the UAE I had to go on a desert safari which included dune-busting in a 4WD, the last time leaving all us passengers sick as dogs from all the lurching and cornering, and totally unable to enjoy our "Arab-style buffet feast" - which, as it turned out, was no tragedy. So I've got out of it this time round and instead have paid (sigh) to do something much pleasanter and more peaceful: a ride over the dunes on an Arab horse, and then a sunset trek on a camel which will last 45 minutes and be much more fun than the scant three minutes you get as part of Arabian Adventures' desert safari.

Then it's on to Budapest, which I visited a couple of years ago on an Insight coach tour - beautiful city, no penance to return there. This time though I will be leaving along the river, on Uniworld's River Beatrice which will be my home for four nights as I sample the first part of their Danube cruise. I'm so happy to be returning to river cruising - quite my favourite mode of travel - though it is going to be cruel, making me leave after Vienna when everyone else will be continuing on to Passau in Germany. So I shall just have to make the most of my lovely cabin, the friendly staff, the great food, and all that continuous, 360-degree scenery. And you know what's going to make it even better? Christmas markets! I can taste the Glühwein already...

Living in fragments

I've just finished watching the 1992 Merchant-Ivory movie of Howards End which reminded me how much I love EM Forster, and that I must re-read him - it's been years. So should you. Also, cast your eyes to the right, and there is the dedication from that novel: "Only connect", which I use in a very superficial manner, but the concept of which of course simply suffuses his story, about the buttoned-up Wilcoxes and the intense Schlegels, about the prose and the passion, and unconnected arches.

The 21 arches in my photo are beautifully connected, and curved: McAlpine's Glenfinnan Viaduct in Scotland, and that's the Jacobite crossing it, which stood in for the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies. There were a lot of lovely steam trains in the Forster movie, and echoing railway stations - such a gift to directors, almost a cliché, they're such romantic places, as full of meetings and partings as airports, but so much more atmospheric.

Having written 26 stories and 28 blog entries (not this one: Air France) since getting back from Europe in June, I've got just two more to do next week to complete my commissions and clear the decks ready for the next lot of travel - and those two are about travelling around Europe by train. I didn't have the time to do a proper expedition, but on one day going from Dijon to Surrey I took 7 separate trains; and on another I spent the entire day on the train from Berlin to Budapest, not reading but looking out of the window and watching the day pass in real time as Germany and the Czech Republic and Hungary went by outside. Some people might have found it boring, but I loved the feeling of being both unconnected, or unplugged, in the sense of having nothing to do but sit and gaze and daydream, as well as connected to the journey in a way you never are in the limbo of an aircraft. Though, I have to say, modern trains, while faster and more comfortable, have lost a lot of their romance after years of 'improvements'.

Reconnecting

Goodness knows how far I've travelled in the last six and a half weeks, or for how many hours (or days). I could work it out, but my poor jet-lagged brain wilts at the very notion. Let's just leave it at 7 flights, 11 rail journeys, one week-long cruise plus four other boat trips, and lots of driving. Being driven, rather, in cars, coaches, a roller-coaster and one ambulance.

There's been history and architecture, art and war, old friends and some new ones, a wedding and a camel, innumerable churches and cathedrals plus one astonishing mosque, lots of good food and a surprising amount of beer (favourite: Berliner Weisse - must be rot, not grun). It's been interesting, sad, funny, emotional, heart-warming, boring, horrifying, painful and tiring. The weather was summer-hot and winter-cold, with rain and an icy Mistral. I hated myself for packing so badly and having to haul around such a stupidly heavy suitcase, and will NEVER do that again.

Right now I feel that I never actually want to leave home again. Mainly because I'm tired, and sore, and have so much writing to do from the trips I've done this year already - but also because though I've seen such wonderful sights, such beauty of so many different sorts, I went down to the beach today and realised yet again that where natural beauty is concerned, a 20-minute drive is all it takes for an eyeful (and heartful) of the best.

Another day, three other countries

Breakfast in Hungary, lunch in Slovakia, dinner in Poland: what it is to be a globetrotter! Though in fact it was only a day's not very intensive driving in our comfortable Insight coach through pretty green hills and farmland with little villages of coloured houses with steeply-pitched roofs, and churches with tall spires of various shapes. There were people tending neat gardens, some crop hung to dry on triangular racks, a stork wading through long grass, a deer watching something, lots of clear mountain streams and proper mountains with snow on them.

There were also clusters of horrible Soviet-era apartment blocks, now painted brightly but still eyesores ("though stylish inside!" insisted Karin, who grew up in one), ugly factories belching smoke and smells out into the clean air, electricity sub-stations all cables and transformers, car-yards under tents of plastic banners, and lots of Tesco supermarkets. But mainly it was lovely, the apple and plum trees blossoming white and pink, the woodlands pleasantly mixed deciduous and conifer, scatterings of goats and sheep, random singly-tethered cows chewing their cud, and always the appealing traditional houses, three or four storeys, or just one in sturdy wood.

The southern part of Poland we came in to was especially attractive - and the roads were excellent! And now we're in Krakow, which has not only swans on the wide bend of the river below the towers of the Old Town's cathedral, but an actual salt mine to explore tomorrow. Now there's a thing.

Ugly and beautiful

When the tour guide uses the words "wars of independence" you know you're in a country with a complicated and tragic history. Hungary is in the fertile Carpathian Basin that's been coveted for over a thousand years and successively claimed by Celts, Magyars, Romans, Mongols, Turks, French, Italians, Germans and Russians, some of them several times each, and if I think too hard about all the history I heard today the whole lot evaporates out of my head. Back at Heroes' Square, the four big statues on top of the colonnades represent Labour ("we know all about that"), War ("we've had so many wars"), Peace ("we've had hardly any of that in our history") and Progress ("still waiting") - that's according to Agnes, and she knew what she was talking about.

Later we went to the Terror Museum, in the Budapest equivalent of the Champs Elysees with Gucci and Louis Vuitton just down the road, and tiptoed through the building used first by the Hungarian Nazis (who knew?) and then by the military police, who were the same people in a different uniform. It was stern stuff, well presented and thorough, and though there could have been a bit more English labelling, there was no doubt about what went on there - and on, and on. The voice testimonies were pretty riveting, godawful stories from ordinary-looking people; and then there were the torture instruments, including an actual battered bright light on a stand by a chair in the 'Treatment Room' that made a joke I've often made seem very sick. And there was a gallows (used). It was horrible, and sad, and confusing: just a couple of days ago, in Zagan, we were feeling sorry for the Russians in the concentration camp of Stalag VIII C, and now here they were doing unspeakable things to the Hungarians. Bad people are bad people wherever they were born, I guess.

But there were beautiful things today too: the interior of the fabulous Parliament buildings, the lovely church up on the hill in Buda, and a spectacular dinner cruise along the Danube with all the bridges and best buildings perfectly lit up and colouring the black water.

Bard in Budapest

Knowing nothing about Hungary other than associating it with a Rhapsody, an Uprising, goulash and paprika, most of what I saw today meant very little. The statues in Heroes' Square of men world-famous in Hungary (in my ignorant eyes at least) I enjoyed simply as works of art and historical oddities: the horse's bridle made out of antlers, the Viking moustaches, the man in long robes clearly astonished to find himself in such - presumably - exalted company. We were free-wheeling today, making the most of the lovely weather on an open-topped bus tour with a frankly abysmal commentary - although, European history being the dauntingly complicated affair that it is, that wasn't so surprising.

What did impress us was the fabulous architecture; so grand, so imperial, so beautiful on its hill above the Danube, so artistically laid out. The Parliament buildings knock Westminster into a cocked hat, especially seen from a boat on a hot sunny day with a pleasant breeze. We boated, we bussed, we trammed, we wandered - it was all about ambience today, with violins (they are to Budapest what bagpipes are to Edinburgh). Tomorrow we get the facts and figures.

One thing we found while meandering was this statue of Shakespeare apparently deploring some kind of shoe-related malfunction (but actually bowing) that's a replica of one in - wait for it - Ballarat in Victoria, where we went in 2010. It was created by a Hungarian-born sculptor living in Australia, and recreated for Budapest to 'serve as a spiritual link among the discerning public in Australia [pause for your appreciation of no gags inserted here], Hungary and Great Britain'. Coincidence, eh? Not unknown to the bard himself, of course, as a handy plot device.

All aboard, again

Back on the trains today, successfully avoiding the scenario above: twelve hours from Berlin to Budapest during which I mainly gazed out of the (regrettably dirty) windows and watched the countryside pass by. It was sort of an experiment, to try overland instead of through the air, and on the whole I think it was a success. I saw occasional vapour trails of planes passing overhead whose passengers at best would have seen the yellow of the oilseed rape, but little else.

They didn't see the little towns and villages with their onion-domed churches and brightly-painted half-hipped houses, and the bridges over the Elbe (the river looking muddy brown but nowhere near as doomy as in Wolfgang Borchert's play Draussen vor der Tur), and the flowering chestnuts and lilac trees, the busily productive allotments, and the boats on the river. Nor, to be fair, did they see the derelict factories with peeling paint and broken windows, all the graffiti, the Soviet-style concrete apartment blocks, the power stations with their smoking chimneys.

But it felt good to travel in real time, to have the leisure to watch the day pass by, the sun move from one side of the train to the other, to see the people rushing to work and then, later, out enjoying the sunny evening on bikes, roller blades, walking dogs through meadows knee-high in grass and dandelions, fishing in ponds and the river; before a lovely sunset that I could watch till the very end of the afterglow. And it was good too to be able to move about during the day, wander through the carriages, be greeted at regular intervals by the cheery trolley guy with his beer and snacks. Finally - admittedly, about two hours later than would have been ideal - it was good to end the journey in a new city feeling tired simply because it was bedtime, and not spaced-out and confused after yet another episode of limbo.

Although, whoa, this was confusing: what's Rangitoto doing in the Czech Republic?

Cruising into 2012

What better way to spend the first (uncharacteristically damp, grey and humid) day of the New Year than by indulging in some movie nonsense on the pretext of revisiting locations from the old one? Thus it was that I spent more than two hours twitching and wriggling nervously in my seat as I watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol work through its ridiculous story, told with every tool of movie trickery in the box. Steve Jobs (RIP) would have been thrilled to see the casual and ubiquitous use of iPads and iPhones to track and identify villains as well as a host of other useful spy-themed apps. The most thrilling part though appealed to a much more basic and age-old human instinct: fear of heights.

Which of course took Tom to Dubai, home of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, at 828m and 160 storeys, to do a Spidey up the outside with a dodgy gripper glove and then a Canyon Swing back down again and in through the window. As you do. The views down that extraordinary shiny silver building were dizzyingly spectacular, the surrounding buildings, the vast fountain complex and the ground itself so incredibly far away. I wish I had had the time to go up to the Observation Deck, but you have to book or pay some huge sum, and I was, as usual, on a tight schedule; but I did get to see it from the bottom, which was amazing enough - although very hard to fit into a viewfinder.

The movie started in Budapest, which I was interested to see as I'll be going there in May; then from Dubai went to Mumbai - where I haven't been, does Delhi count? - and finished up in Seattle, on the waterfront where we had a nose around, were most impressed by the Aquarium, and took a ferry from across to Bainbridge Island, which looked lovely but again we had no time to look around (aren't you glad you're not a travel writer, hogtied by the tyranny of the itinerary?). There was even a glimpse of San Francisco, where a chunk got taken off the top of the Transamerica Pyramid by an at-the-last-second aborted nuclear missile. So, pretty much been there - but done all that? Thankfully, not.