I am LOVING this!!!

Yes, what a great read- just found this thread.

Sonora, I'm loving you for saying that!

Perth was always going to be a stop on the way, because of the distance, but I knew that there was an American WW2 site in the old submarine base in Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River downstream from Perth.

When the Phillipines fell, the submarines based there made their way to Australia and operated out of Perth (among other places) for the duration of the war. One of the stories I love is that of the USS Pampanito whose crew rescued a whole bunch of Aussie POWs from a torpedoed Japanese ship. A few months later the sub sailed into Fremantle and some of the rescued men were waiting on the quay. Apparently that liberty was one to remember!

I'd arranged to meet the local BookCrossers. These were people I'd never seen before, but I knew I'd receive a great welcome.

Live from Perth evening 1 April:
A big thank you to Kalasue, who was so very generous with her time and petrol yesterday. She was the perfect guide, full of a background story to everything I saw.

And we saw quite a lot. The Art Gallery and cultural precinct - as an aside, I'm so very glad I got even a quick look at the collection, some really mouth-watering paintings there, and the buildings themselves were just fantastic! - the city, the foreshore, Kings Park, including a mindblowing trip along their elevated walkway through the treetops, the gathering in the restaurant, and then a trip along the shore of the Indian Ocean to Fremantle.

I don't have time to do it all justice, but as I sat later that evening in a Perth park admiring some multicultural dancing displays and eating some delicious Jamaican Jerk Chicken, my heart (and tummy) were full).

I released my submarine book at the slipway used by the Americans in WW2. An added bonus was that the slip was occupied by a submarine, albeit one slightly newer than the wartime vessels.

The YHA hostel was brand new and very comfortable. Recommended to all.

And the BookCrossers! Thank you all for coming out to meet me. Kalasue, Libertine101 , Murrmurr and and American lady whose screen-name I didn't quite catch. We had some wonderful tucker in the Botanic Gardens restaurant, a bit of bookswapping, and the pleasure of each others' company.

For me, it's not the books, nor even the wonderful locations. It's the BookCrossers!

Live from Qantas Club Sydney International, evening 2 April 2006:

OK. I've finished my Australian flights, and now I'm waiting for my Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. It's an overnight flight, and I'm hoping to get a bit of sleep. We'll see. Last night I kept on waking up, wondering if it was time for me to leave. I managed to beat the alarm, and slipped out for a quick shave and shower before changing and completing my packing with minimal disturbance to my room-mates. I'd done most of my packing the night before, so it was just a matter of making sure my towel and pyjamas were included and I hadn't left anything behind.

I may have lost one of my travel padlocks. Then again I may have put it somewhere. I'll find out, I suppose, if I ever unpack completely, which is unlikely before I end this trip.

I'm at max weight now, with my big bag at 30 kilos and the tote bag at 17. I'll be leaving books and chocolate in Osaka, and hopefully I won't be getting too much in exchange, as it's very difficult to move with such a weight! And so few hands. Bless the man who invented roller wheels on the bottom of bags!

Perth to Melbourne was a good flight. A lot of cloud, and a lot of dry Aussie land. I think I flew over the mouth of the Murray, but I'm not sure.

Melbourne to Sydney was a bigger aircraft - a 767 instead of a 737 - and I overflew Canberra. Usually I fly in and out of Canberra, so I'm never aboard on of those dots leaving contrails above my home, and I made sure I was sitting on the correct side to look down on my home.

Took a photograph, which may have turned out, but taking pictures out of plane windows is chancy!

Released a few of my smaller books here and there. Have to leave one here, I guess. I've got one with me and one planned for Hong Kong.

Comments
Perth was magic. Not much to the downtown area, but the waterfront was pretty good. I had a look at the collection in the State Art Gallery and enjoyed it immensely. Kalasue (a local BookCrosser) met me there and we had morning tea. She then drove me around Perth, ending up at the Botanic Gardens, where we walked here and there. Some stunning views across the Swan River (which is more like a lake at that point) and I enjoyed the treetop walk. A gorgeous day. A long lunch with more local BookCrossers, books were exchanged and then Sue drove me down to the Indian Ocean where she dropped me off at the maritime museum.

I bought a book on the sub operations during the war and tried to identify as many locations as possible. Across the harbour from me the boats had tied up between patrols - and such long patrols they were! - and beside me were a couple of slips flanked by huge old cranes. Slips and cranes had been used during the war. There was a memorial to the submarine crews - I always get a lump in my throat when I see those simple words marking those who never came back: "Still on Patrol" - but it was blocked off because some restoraton work was being done. I took some photographs of the memorial against the flank of one of our old Oberon diesel-electric subs, much the same sort as the USN wartime subs.

Bought several kilograms of chocolate and TimTams (chocolate covered cookies) at a supermarket. At my next stop I'd be staying with Cari who had toured Australia last year and developed a fondness for the local chocolate, which of course she couldn't get where she now lives.

Took the train back to my hostel, and then wandered around looking for dinner. All I wanted was fish and chips on the waterfront, but I couldn't find any. Maybe I could have found a table for one at one of the many lively pubs/restaurants, but I'd feel so lonely and awkward. Found a multicultural dancing festival and lined up for takeaway chicken and a hot dog cooked in a Jamaican fashion with lots of smoke.

Wandered back and wrote a report. I find it difficult to sleep the night before an early flight. I need to get packed before I go to bed and be able to have a shower, get dressed and leave without waking the other occupants of a hostel room. So I generally wake every hour or so and stew for a while before dozing. I've got an alarm, but I didn't need it.

Had to haul my gear a block away because the shuttle drivers didn't yet know the location of the new hostel, and I've got to say that this point in the trip it was the most awkward and heavy of all.

In size and weight I had:
1. L L Bean rolling duffle bag. I had a big plastic Tupperware container inside to protect the Tim Tams, but basically it was chocolate and gifts and clothes. Maybe a few books. Thirty kilos, but once I pulled out the handle and rolled it along, it wasn't bad.
2. BookCrossing tote bag. Big and yellow and very sturdy, but only a couple of cloth handles. 17 kilos, most of it books and BookCrossing supplies (labels, bags, stamps etc). I'd been stockpiling books with appropriate titles for months. The "Pig Boats" book I'd left at Fremantle had been one of them, dealing with USN sub ops in WW2. Books from home that I meant to leave across the world, and books from BookCrossers that I met to carry on a bit further. That was heavy going, and after ten minutes or so I'd have to start transferring it from one hand to the other.
3. Backpack with laptop, dongles, camera, paperwork, jacket, waterbottle etc. 8-12 kilograms.
4. Small daypack for carrying my kit at stopovers. This varied in weight, according to my mission. I could leave everything behind at a hostel and carry this small pack with camera, tripod, jacket, a few books. Or take it on a plane with me. For now it was just awkward and bobbled around. Later on I developed the trick of putting it inside my duffle and pulling it out just before I checked in.
5. Day-Timer. This is where I store my cards, my money, calendar, phonebook, passport, tickets and so on. About as big as a trade paperback, maybe a kilogram. Later on I started wearing cargo pants on flights and I could tuck it inside one of the big pockets, but for now I held it in my hand.

At this point I was dressed in Columbia ROC chinos which I can thoroughly recommend apart from the lack of a big cargo pocket, and a lightweight shortsleeved shirt - another Columbia product, which I hoped would keep me looking reasonably presentable through three Qantas Clubs and Cathay Pacific's "Wing" lounge in Hong Kong.

Later on, I wore cargo pants and a polo while flying. I still got into airline lounges.

I was early for the shuttle. A courtesy the driver appreciated in the grey dawn, and we spent a bit of time going between hotels picking people up including folk who weren't there and had to be returned for. Eventually there we were at the airport and I made sure I wouldn't see my baggage until four airports later and that I had window seats all the way.

A bite of brekkie in the Qantas Club, but only a bite because I knew I'd get a couple of meals on the plane.

The flight over to Melbourne was pleasant. With the arrival of a new month, my San Francisco songs had gone and I listened to others. Read a John Grisham thriller, dozed and looked out of the window. Oh yeah. And ate a couple of light meals. Just a 737, but it was comfortable.

An hour or so in the lounge in Melbourne. I left a book there, drank coffee, drained the dragon and climbed aboard my flight to Sydney, a 767. Very comfy, but barely time to appreciate it.

Transfer from domestic to international in Sydney. A lengthy process involving a shuttle bus and a wait on uncomfortable seats in a lounge. Through security again, say goodbye to the immigration folk and prop in the Qantas Club there until my Cathay Pacific flight was called late in the evening.

Aboard CX 138 Sydney-Hong Kong 2/3 April 2006

I've got to say that Cathay Pacific has got me hooked. Every time I thought about something I needed, there was a beautiful young lady at my elbow, or as close as you can get to the elbow of someone in a window seat, anyway. I could get used to this!

As I write, we're about an hour out of Hong Kong, I've had a scrummy breakfast, watched an episode of Kath and Kim, and now I'm just rounding out the edges of my contentment.

We're over the South China Sea in a Boeing 777. Four in the morning local time and black as a something's whatsit outside. It's been a great flight and while I prefer a daylight flight so I can gaze down over waters pale and limpid or jungles dense and torpid. Or something like that. Kath and Kim brings out the inner poet in me. If not the grammatic fanatic. Let's accentuate the positives and say that I've saved the price of accomodation with a night flight.

Can't say as I slept well, but I never do on a plane anyway. I slept better than any other flight, let's leave it at that. I woke up with a jolt something past two AM when they turned on the lights and commenced breakfast.

That's Hong Kong time. I have a habit of setting my watch to destination time when I get on the plane. All this mucking about with daylight saving has provided a bit of delicious uncertainty to the process. I'm never good at this spring forward autumn back routine at the best of times and heading up over the equator on the same day that New South Wales changes over is just gilding the silly billy. Or something like that. Anyway, we're landing in half an hour. Or possibly two or three.

Let's see. Today I get to hang out in Hong Kong. In transit, so the entry form I've filled out and wedged into my passport may become an interesting souvenir.

I'd better close down now - I think we've commenced our descent. Either that or the pilot is feeling his oats.

Yes. The pilot's confirmed descent. I'll see if the cabin crew has this morning's newspaper. That'll test their service levels!

Comments:
From the moment I stepped aboard and turned left intead of right, I reached a higher plane. Business Class on Cathay Pacific is the way air travel should be. Two abreast instead of three, and they knock out every second row of seats. Maybe up ahead in First Class they were able to stretch out flat, but I came pretty close. I could press a button and the seat would unfold or recline or do a bit of both.

The delightful cabin attendants kept me supplied with spiced tomato juice, and when they served a meal, they did so on starched linen with practiced grace. They pampered me shamelessly. Qantas is OK, I thought to myself, but I've found a new love!

The daylight saving thing was a bit of a worry. In the Sydney Qantas Club they weren't announcing flights and my boarding pass issued in Perth and the overhead monitors were indicating two different boarding times. I had to get the counter staff to check before I could relax and enjoy a bit of freebie internet.

At this point I'll mention my watch. Perhaps it was a needless extravagance when I bought it some years back, but since then my Citizen Eco Drive Skyhawk has been a wonderful companion on international trips. It has time zones plugged in, and all I need do when I board a plane is to select my destination, press two buttons at once, and the hands move around to my next time zone. It has a digital display if I want to check on a different time zone, such as what time it is back home.

CX 138 arrived in Hong Kong before dawn. We taxied for what seemed like a very long time before we got to our gate, and I was astounded by the vast expanse of tarmac littered with huge aircraft. There were hundreds of them.

I couldn't see much beyond the bright lights and dark spaces, but I was impressed. This was one serious airport!

Travelling up the front worked its usual magic and my long stride coupled with the magic travelators saw me bounding through the airport ahead of the rest. No need to stop and collect luggage - I was headed for Cathay Pacific's awesome lounge: "The Wing".

Staid in transit and immigration (or some sort of arrivals control) barely glanced at my papers. And then I was off romping along to The Wing, the feel of a hot shower against my skin and cold juice down my throat spurring me on.

It wasn't supposed to open until 0545 and by my reckoning there was still half an hour to go, but the counter was manned and there was another traveller there already, arguing with the attendant.

"But DragonAir is owned by Cathay Pacific..." he was protesting, and I could hear a loser. He went off muttering, and I presented my boarding pass to the good looking air dragon, hoping that my reasonably uncreased appearance would do the trick.

Boarding pass it was. My Qantas Club membership counted for nothing, likewise my Silver Frequent Flyer card, but travelling Business Class earnt me a smile and an onwards wave.

There was some sort of temporary lounge where you could wait until the real deal opened up, and let me tell you, dear reader, this was better than many a lounge I was to encounter elsewhere. I could have happily spent all day there, snacking on the munchies and draining the freshly brewed coffee and lazing in the comfy chairs.

A few other earlybirds arrived, and I began to consider that I might be overdressed with a button-up shirt. Experienced longhaul travellers dress for comfort, even if they are in a top level lounge. Shorts and thongs might have seen me turned away, but I reckon anything else was a goer.

Staff began to arrive and in due course the sign blocking the stairs up to the real lounge were withdrawn. I gave the high sign to the others waiting and led the charge upwards.

Up to a new level.

I might not be an elegant person, but I have an eye for elegant design, and I could tell from the moment I poked my nose into The Wing that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to get everything just right, from the simple but stylish tables in the Noodle bar to the long water feature in the computer room.

And speaking of water, my first aim was to find some and get naked in it. I'd sussed out the location of the showers, and I found them, discreetly tucked away. A couple of attendants hovered at the entrance and loaded me up with a towel big enough for two and shaving and toothbrushing kit.

The shower room was big, warm and comfortable. Plenty of room to stow and hang my kit and oh, how I enjoyed the hot water! Nothing like a tub to set you up after a long flight. I made a mental note to include a spare pair of undies and socks in my backpack for the next time.

Refreshed and shaven, I headed back out into the lounge. My aim at one of these places is always to find a spot with a view of airport operations where I can set up my laptop, use the freebie wifi, and tap into the internet with a supply of coffee and munchies.

The internet was a bit wobbly at that hour of the morning and I had to resort to a built in computer for a while, but good things to eat and drink were available in abundance. In fact, for the first couple of hours, there seemed to be more staff than passengers.

The lounge was built on the wrong side of the terminal for a good view, but it was well placed for leaning out and looking down on other, less fortunate, travellers, and the aircraft were visible beyond the terminal's glass wall. Not a good location for aircraft photography, so I put my camera away.

All told, I had about three very pleasant hours in The Wing before I had to reluctantly leave for my next flight. Thanks, Cathay Pacific!

Back out in the real world, I was sidetracked into an electronics store, where among the iPods and cameras I found a display of travel adaptors. A subject of keen interest to me, as recharging my various battery-powered gadgets out of odd-shaped power sockets around the world is important, lest I find myself out of batteries just as I needed to use my laptop or camera or phone.

My adaptor kit was pretty basic. Three different adaptors, one each for US, UK and Euro sockets, plus a small Australian powerboard, letting me recharge two items from the one socket.

I found a universal adaptor on sale, with a set of four prongs at one end and a set of sockets at the other. You could use this to plug anything into anything. I snapped one up, as I loved the idea of one device replacing three. About as heavy and bulky as two normal adaptors, but overall it was a saving in space and weight. Besides, I loved its clever design!

My flight was leaving from the far end of the terminal, and after wasting a few more minutes trying to photograph a Qantas jet taking off in front of the spectacular mountains and apartment buildings on the other side of the runway, I was going to have to be very snappy indeed if I was to get to the gate in time. No worries - there was a train service that shuttled from one end of the terminal to the other, and that got me there with time to spare. There were still people queuing - quite a long queue, actually - and I tailed onto the end.

One of the attendants spotted my Business Class card and whisked me off to a much shorter line which led to a separate entrance. This was service!

Qantas could learn a lot from Cathay Pacific, I decided. And that was the end of my "Qantas is the best airline in the world" attitude, fostered by forty years of television adverts telling me this.

Live from Osaka, 3 April 2006:

The policeman was tiny, but his authority was immense. He wore a dark blue uniform with badges and buttons, a peaked cap and a small but deadly selection of weapons.

"No holiday for you!" he shouted at me, "We deport you to Korea on next flight from Kansai, lock you in cage and feed you wasabi and chips, or send you to live on river bank in blue plastic shack."

I gazed numbly at the immigration form in front of me. "Address while staying in Japan" was the heading and there was a generous box for me to write in an address, as well as a phone number. I didn't know Cari's address and I'd stupidly forgotten to print out an email with her phone number. I was sunk. Assuming I got through immigration.

If I did, then it didn't matter. My cell phone was telling me "No service".

In Hong Kong earlier that day, I'd been welcomed with text messages, offered instructions for help lines to Telstra back home, and reassured that my phone would work. So my options were to squeeze myself and my baggage into a phone booth or an Internet cafe. Assuming I could find one. And I had the right change. Which I didn't, my Japanese currency being zero. So I'd have to find an ATM. If they had them in Japan.

Was there ever anybody more helpless and trusting in the marvels of the modern age than me arriving in Japan? I knew that Cari wasn't meeting my flight and that I had to take the train to ummm, something-Osaka. More challenge there, but how hard could it be to catch a train?

At least I could look back on the positives. Hong Kong Airport may be immense, but it's also immensely efficient, and although running late, seduced by the sight of huge airliners taking to the air in front of a dramatic backdrop of soaring mountains and towering residential blocks, and a German tourist who wanted to be photographed in front of above but whose camera didn't appear to work despite any amount of button-pushing and increasingly forced smiles, I found that the sign leading to "Gates 33-80" didn't do anything of the kind, instead taking me two floors down to an empty subway platform, where in a matter of seconds I was whisked to my gate by a driverless train.

I'd been shown to my seat, strapped in and fed tea and juice, delicious snacks and a wonderful meal, and allowed to watch "Memoirs of a Geisha" while the rugged Japanese coastline appeared out of my window and passed by for my inspection. Wasabi wasn't that bad, so long as you didn't eat half the ball in one go. The noodles were excellent and the beef could have been sucked up with a straw. Top marks Cathay Pacific!

Th sight of Japan from the air is a testament to the dangers of 24/7 work. The Japanese began with nothing after the war. Every piece of infrastructure had been bombed flat. And yet everywhere I looked, there were grand sweeping curves of freeways and railways, Golden Gate-sized suspension bridges with tides swirling dramatically beneath, container ships steaming in straight lines. Golf courses of majestic proportions sprawled over the land, and industrial facilities were everywhere.

Literally, as my plane descended over Kobe and Osaka. I've seen San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles from the air, but let me tell you that neither is a patch on the Osaka area. The industry went on and on and on. Skyscrapers by the cityload, container ports, more bridges, factories, docks, whole airports moored out in the sea...

OK, I was impressed. These folk obviously hadn't stopped building stuff in the last sixty years. They were like kids with a neverending Lego set.

All beautifully, efficiently, superbly designed. Kansai International was a huge rectangle of man-made island, a terminal a kilometre long, maybe three, and heavy construction vehicles making the whole lot bigger and better. And shinier.

I smiled at the stewardess, power-walked down the jetway, and was first into the toilets, maybe a couple of hundred metres down the line, where I efficiently disposed of four hours of juice, tea, coffee and mineral water, served with a smile by above stewardess. Who could resist her?

And then another train, a monorail this time. My sidetrip had allowed most of the flight's passengers to pass me by, save for those who were now queued up for the facilities, and when I got to the immigration hall, there was most of a packed Boeing 777 ahead of me. They call it a 777 because of the number of seats inside - little snippet of technical detail there from a plane nut like me.

The Japanese side of the hall vanished - a wave of the passport and they were gone, while my "Foreigners" moved slowly but steadily forwards, me with my incomplete entry form, taking up the tail position.

At last it was my turn, and a keen young officer took my passport and form, looked at me once, stamped my passport and waved me through.

"I've got some chocolate biscuits, cookies, sweets, candies", I informed the Customs cove, neglecting to mention that this comprised about half my baggage weight, and I was waved through with barely a glance from the sniffer dog.

Here I really began sweating. My luggage was heavy and bulky, but that wasn't it. All around me was bustle, colour, activity and turmoil, 99% of it in Japanese, and I can't read the characters. There's one that looks like a stick figure, another that's a tic-tac-toe board, and all the rest are exactly the same: a squiggle and a scrawl and a mash.

But there were enough English signs for me to find the information desk and get all the information I could hold. Except for Cari's address or phone number. I was directed to an ATM, where I got out 5 000 yen, not knowing if this large amount would drain my bank account or be woefully inadequate. Then to a kiosk where I began the task of buying exotic candy for my children back home with something called "justintime" which appeared to be a breath freshener. This gave me a stock of 100 yen coins to work the internet terminals.

The logon screen, once I dropped a coin in the slot, was all in Japanese, save for a tiny button down the bottom corner, labelled "English". This had no effect on error messages or dialogue boxes, but at least it made me feel better the more times I pressed it. But I'm a cluey fellow where computers are concerned, even if I arrive in an alien land without a clue, and soon I was browsing my old email messages for an address, a phone number, anything.

My mail archives were back home in Canberra, but in the mail stored on my ISP's server, I found a recent post from Cari - she'd meet the 1540 train, being on platform 11 of Shin-Osaka station at 1630.

Right. I was set. Mind you, if I didn't hit that exact point in time and space I was sunk deeper than the Titanic, but I had something to aim at, and if there is one thing the Japanese are good at above everything else, it's trains. More of that Lego mentality, you see.

So I lugged my baggage out of the terminal and along to the railway station.

Hmmm. Two different banks of ticket vending machines, one for each railway line out, all in incomprehensible.

Cripes. I had to find the correct line, the correct train, the correct fare.

But I puzzled it out, fed in notes and coins, and then the machine spat out two tickets. Printed in Incomprehensible.

A helpful chap looked at my tickets, held up three fingers several times over to indicate the correct platform "Tree!" with a smile, and I wedged myself and my baggage into the elevator and found myself on the platfiorm.

Turned out it was platform four, but that was the right one, I was assured by those on the scene.

Despite the trains leaving from platform three at regular intervals and the utter lack of any movement on platform four apart from the steady input of more passengers and more baggage, I stuck to my post. Well, I changed my post a number of times when I realised that the numbers on the far wall corresponded to the expected positions of the carriages, and I was going to be in a non-reserved seating carriage, and then again when I noticed that the other passsengers for my carriage were lining up between two white strips on the loor, presumably where the door would be.

1540 rolled around. No train. No screen to tell me about the next arrival, neither. Just a lot of "railway station" loudspeaker announcements. In Incomprehensible.

1600. No train.
1615. No train.

Hmmmm.

Everyone in Japan is helpful and knows a few words of English, but I was beginning to doubt the reassurances I was given by my fellow passengers - all short, black-haired locals. The only thing that kept me from flinging myself into the path of one of the regular departures from platform three was the fact that the crowd of potential travellers was steadily increasing. Obviously they were expecting a train, and I was assured, after inspection of my two tickets - two tickets for one trip, way to reassure nervous travellers, Japan Railways! - that this would be my train.

Eventually, finally, ultimately and (hehehehe) terminally, the train arrived and the crowd surged forward. Like hell it did. The doors opened, the arriving passengers alighted and the crowd stayed where it was, apart from rearranging itself to somehow place me at the tail of the queue.

Maintecs with brooms and rubbish bags worked the carriages over, pressed buttons and made the seats rotate so they faced the other way. Then they stood in the doorways, held up their hands, and when all were showing ready,a whistle blew and then the crowd surged forward.

Somehow I managed to stow all my gear and find a non-reserved seat.

Once the train was off the artificial airport island, I discovered that while the Japanese might be able to plan, build and run infrastructure efficiently, when it comes to town planning, they are like kids with a Lego set. Each house, each apartment block, each warehouse and shopping mall might be elegantly designed, but the overall effect is of one vast sea of ugliness. Most of it in grey concrete.

This went on for miles. Fascinating to look at the details, and here and there were pocket-sized parks - with cherry blossoms! - and even ricefields. Every now and then there would be a note on the display at the end of the carriage as to the name of the next station, and occasionally this would be in English. I tortured myself, as I got closer, with the thought that Cari would have given up and gone home, or still be at home awaiting a phone call.

And here we were, pulling into Shin Osaka. big platform, crowded, all the other passengers moving. How would I ever find Cari? If she was there at all.

The doors opened, and there she was, smiling in front of me. Angel Cari!

Rarely have I been more pleased to see someone! When the crowd and my baggage had settled down, I gave her a heartfelt hug.

And now, after a night snoring on her couch and a bowl of muesli, she's about to guide me down to Hiroshima.

Comments.
There was no policeman. Or at least, not one yelling at me. There are certainly enough around, and my how they love their uniforms!

But I was definitely concerned about how to find Cari in such a vast metropolis, and I was kicking myself up the bum for not having printed out the precise details. And I was worried about getting through immigration with no idea of the precise address I was to stay.

In fact, Cari later informed me, the immigration control footsoldiers look at your documents, but are reluctant to say more than a few basic words in English, because they are scared of making a mistake and losing face before the foreigner. Presumably problems are handled by those higher up who are more confident in English.

Cari is a young lady BookCrosser from New York, who had toured Australia the previous year, winning the hearts of all who met her, and she was now working in Osaka as an English language teacher. She had very kindly offered to put me up for a couple of nights and show me around. In fact, she had offered to meet my plane, but as that would have involved two reasonably expensive train tickets and a sizable chunk out of her limited free time, I had assured her that I could find my way to a central station and we'd meet up there.

She'd been missing good American or Australian chocolate, so I'd stocked up on Cadbury family blocks in Perth, making sure I bought enough for her three flatmates.

The flat itself was tiny, but I was grateful for a folded down couch in the loungeroom. And Cari's wireless internet connection.

And Cari. Without her kind offer to guide me, there was no way I would have been brave enough to find my own way to Hiroshima. And Hiroshima was one place I needed to go if I were to understand World War Two.

Live from Hiroshima, 4 April 2006:
The drizzle began as we looked out of the Peace Memorial Museum down the vista and across the Motoyasu River to the A-Bomb Dome.

I'd kept my own tears on the inside - barely - but the day cried for me. Tears from the clouds, falling softly down from the piece of sky where the atomic bomb exploded sixty years ago and the age of nuclear war began.

We have so far avoided the holocaust predicted so many times since that day, but again and again I looked at the photographs of the destruction of a city and its people, and thought that although the images were black and white, the exact same scenes could be repeated today in colour captured on digital cameras and cellphones.

Atomic weapons have become no less dreadful since that day. Quite the reverse. The horror of Hiroshima could be repeated, and I tried to imagine how it would be if instead of those odd foreign names it was my own Canberra streets, suburbs, friends and family.

The tales of the survivors were scattered through the museum, in the exhibits, on computer databases, in captions under photographs in stark black and white. They spoke of finding loved ones horribly maimed. Or dead. Or pieces of the dead. Or nothing at all save for a lunchbox or a sandal.

How would I feel if I had nothing left of my children but a scrap of clothing or a schoolbook?

Bleak and grey was the sky above the cherry trees in full bloom that morning. Cari and I walked together down a riverside avenue, the blossoms a pink canopy above groups of people having merry picnics - hanami. A tradition to take the family or a group of workmates to the parks and wait for a cherry blossom to bless your drink.

A pink tourist boat glided past, a cloud of bubbles emerging from a hidden generator near the stern. Blossoms and bubbles, parks and picnics. Life goes on.

Life went on after the bomb, the exhibits showed us. Reconstruction and repopulation followed, and today's city of Hiroshima is as bright and bustling as ever. a few memorials, a few more or less undamaged buildings. The famous Peace Dome surrounded by rubble, carefully maintained. And all around is the urban landscape of a typical Japanese city, postwar construction as far as the eye can reach through the haze.

As life returned, death lingered in the radiation-scarred environment, in the story of Sadako, struck down by leukemia ten years after the explosion. Her tragic story has inspired people around the world, and their tributes flow in by the thousands, by the millions, in memory of the thousand origami cranes she folded in the hope that her wish for a return to health would come true. It didn't, but the hopes and wishes remain, as do some of her cranes carefully preserved in the museum. The paper cranes are sent in by children from around Japan and around the world and are displayed in glass cases backing her memorial. I found a garland of white cranes from the Gleeson Catholic College in Adelaide. Others were arranged into patterns and messages. "Peace" said one in the shape of a dove. "No War" said another.

And every so often the cranes are gathered up and recycled into bookmarks and notebooks. I bought a couple, to use in special books.

Comments
Cari booked our tickets down on one of the shinkansen "bullet trains". She's previously taken the far cheaper local trains, but at five hours there and five back, stopping at every station along the way, it's a long trip. I paid for her ticket as well as my own, she got some discount fares through her local knowledge, and we whizzed down and back in about an hour each way. Highly recommended. There's actually not that great a sensation of speed, apart from a tiny bit of buffetting and noise when two shinkansen pass each other, especially in a tunnel. Very comfortable.

At the station, you need to take a tram to the Peace Park. It's cheap and convenient, but you can't just walk out of the station and see the dome. Hiroshima is quite a big city. The locals are used to tourists and are very helpful - amazingly helpful, actually - so it won't be too much hassle. The Park itself is quite big. It's beautifully laid out and planted, a marvellous setting beside the river, but, as I discovered, the juxtaposition of beauty and horror can be overwhelming. You will see people with tears streaming down their cheeks, and one of them might be you.

Live from Hong Kong, 5 April 2005:
Unrelenting ugliness. I mentioned it before, but Osaka is ugly ugly ugly. I've seen some pretty dismal cityscapes, (no, wait, let me rephrase that), some awful dismal cityscapes, but Osaka takes the biscuit.

I don't know how they do it, for each individual building isn't bad in itself. Clean, neat, well-designed, well maintained - each building is something to be proud of. Certainly Cari's block of flats looked every bit as good as anything I've seen in Australia, and probably more efficient in terms of habitability. I might have been sleeping on the couch, but I could not have been more comfortable (nor in friendlier company).

It must be the lack of planning. Shops are located next to houses beside railway lines, bus depots and apartment towers. There is very little in the way of open space, and parkland, honest to Bob green parkland, is very hard to find. Parkland in the sense of a land of car parks, maybe, for vehicles of all types are jammed into spaces the size of a wombat scrape. The efficient use of space means that tall, boxy cars abound - in fact the leading model is something called the "Cube3" which looks pretty much like its name suggests.There is no room for spoilers or fins. Smaller vehicles such as scooters are lined up in rows, and the railway stations have a solid mass of handlebars and bicycle seats forming a sort of thicket outside.

Maybe it's the lack of colour. Every building is grey when it isn't brown. The rare building that is coloured at all differently is famed as a local landmark. Not that I'd be keen to live next to a yellow office block, but it certainly helps you to know that you aren't just walking down an endlessly repeating laneway.

Streets are narrow and packed full of obstacles such as lamposts, signs, cars and vending machines. Street trees are almost non-existent, and lopped into stark shapes when they appear, lest they interfere with the real forest of power lines and poles.

The overall effect is hideous.

One might wonder what sort of people live in such a place. Ugly, drunken yobbos? Stupid, aggressive louts?

No. From my limited exposure, they are the salt of the earth, usually dressed conservatively, smiling, polite and helpful, immensely considerate of each other and never a raised voice. Cari and I needed an internet cafe at one point, and when a shop assistant found out what we wanted, she said "follow me please!" and ran out of the shop, up and escalator down a hall, and pointed out the actual computers we should use. We weren't even customers!

Cari told me that the standard way of seeking help in Osaka, if lost or distressed, is to stand on a corner and look confused. Within seconds some helpful local will appear and assist to the extent of their ability. Cari described how when she forgot her umbrella one day, a gentleman sheltered her with his all the way to her door, a good ten minutes walk out of his way.

This morning we braved the railway lines - or at least I blindly followed Cari, who appeared to have been born with a subway ticket clutched in her fist. Two trains with a change at Osaka Station - Hell's terminus, where the subways, local lines and express Shinkansen all meet in a maze of gates, signs, platforms and concourses - on a quick visit to Osaka Castle.

A funny thing happened as soon as we got off our final train and left the platform with its bright advertisements for electronics, colourful beverages and "SoyJoy" bars. We entered an area of greenery. I looked back and the rail station was a perfect. elegant, harmonious shape blending into the background. Ahead of us a path led between trees and lawns, artfully placed stones and banks of flowers. With cherry trees in blossom here and there.

The city had disappeared behind the trees, save for a few office towers looming over the horizon. And then we turned a corner, and there we were, foreigners amongst a crowd of Japanese, a great green moat before us, a steep stone wall on the other side. Old fortifications, looking like nothing more than a massive piece of landscaping in these modern days. The soldier's eye in me could see the lines of archers behind the parapet, but they were a century gone and all we had now were uniformed salesmen spruiking through bullhorns.

A stout gatehouse, a bridge over the moat, and there we were in a square little enclosure, high stone walls on every side, a perfect killing zone. I looked at the huge blocks of quarried granite, but Cari had eyes for the current occupants. Cherry blossoms and flowers. She was shooting them as fast as she could trigger her digital shutter. I photographed her instead.

We passed through another gate. And another. And yet another, where we had to pay a few yen for entry. By this stage we were underneath Osaka Castle, a huge, pagoda-like fortress, perched on the highest point of what passes for high ground in Osaka.

A reconstruction, a reconstruction which has lasted longer than the original, it is ancient indeed, and I remarked that this was the Japan I had hoped to see. "Yes," said Cari "and you would have if you'd been here five hundred years ago."

The Japan of that time would have been more elegant than what we see today, I am sure. The rivers would not be wide concrete ditches and the gardens wouldn't be poor stifled, cramped enclaves. And the skies would not have been full of permanent smog.

I don't have time to do the castle justice. Let us just say that it is impressive inside and out, and I wish that I had had more time to explore it and its delightful gardens.

But I had to leave, and it was with a heavy heart that I said goodbye to Cari, who has been a marvellous guide, hostess and companion. Thank you Cari!

And here I am in Hong Kong, about to close up for my flight to Paris.

Comments:
I said goodbye to Cari at Shin-Osaka, after the taxi had dropped me and my baggage off, we'd bought my train ticket(s) and I'd had a last round of odd-Japanese-snack-buying. My teenage children are always keen to sample new sweets from around the world ("Don't come home without Pop Rocks", she'd said when I went to the USA the first time) and I'd got some really weird ones in interesting flavours. BlackBlack, Watering Kissmint, Crunky and Poifull, among others. I'd also got a couple of doughnuts from the "Mister Donut" stall ("Thank You Beautiful People!" the wrapping said for the benefit of the customers) which I consumed on the train.

I aimed my camera out of the window and took movies of the ugly cityscape, to show the folks back home that it wasn't all cherry blossoms and parkland.

At the airport I checked in, found my lounge (a tiny little thing this time, nothing like the grand efforts in Hong Kong) and then we boarded the plane out just as the sun was setting. There was a camera mounted under the plane and I watched with interest as baggage handlers and ground crew performed their final rutuals, a tug was hooked on, we were pushed back, we followed a long series of yellow lines and then hurtled down the runway. I took a photograph of the screen as we lifted off.


"HOW did he do that??" wondered one friend when she saw it on my Flickr page.

All too soon the sun was gone altogether and the outside view was just a series of diminishing lights in the blackness outside, and I settled down to dinner and a movie, all served with Cathay Pacific's usual grace.

Back to The Wing on arrival in Hong Kong. A shorter transit this time, but still enough for a shower and a good catchup with email.

Live from le Hotel de Gare, Bayeux, 7 April 2006:
You know how the first taste of a cold beer, the first of the day, always hits the exact spot?

What I want to know is why they don't make the whole glass or bottle taste like that.

Anyway, I've just had the first mouthful of a cold Heineken, and it hit the spot all right. Normally I don't drink by myself, but this time I'll make an exception.

Here I am in the bar of the Hotel du Gare in Bayeux. No internet, but it's a comfortable place to sit down and write about the day, the very long day I've had.

First of all, my hostel in Paris, the Auberge International des Jeunesse, sucks. Maybe it is the room, but I don't think so. For a start, the whole thing shuts down between 1000 and 1500. You want to have a jet-lag recovery or a nap after lunch, tough - you go stretch out on a parc bench for five heures.

I arrived about 0900, very tired after a long flight from Hong Kong via Siberia, St Petersburg and Copenhagen (or at least, eleven kilometres from those places). I had schlepped my luggage, my very heavy and cumbersome luggage, on the train from Charles de Gaulle, through four transfers and multiple flights of steps. At peak hour. I was a puddle of sweat, and what I wanted was a shower, a shave and a snooze, not neccessarily in that order.

I was feeling very Parisian - a bit whiffy and with a fashionable dix-et-sept cent shadow - even if my clothes were totally non-fashionable. I would have needed faded jeans and a roguish look to fit in.

Anyway, the young lady gave me a bit of paper, said "come back at three" and directed my perspiring self to the luggage room. Friends, you have heard of the sewers of Paris? Well, my hostel had its own catacombs, and they began with a narrow stone spiral staircase. How I managed to traverse it without wedging myself solid somewhere along the way, I'll never know. It was very atmospheric, and I use that word in its literal sense.

I took advantage of the dungeon's privacy to shift my shirt and fill my backpack with everything I needed. No way was I going to leave my laptop there!

Place de la Bastille, Notre Dame, le Pantheon, Jardins des Luxemnbourg, Musee des Moyen Age (or at least the outside), Boulevarde Saint Michel, an Internet cafe and Shakespeare & Co where I released a book in that famous bookshop. And home again.

I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, but I was buggered. I needed a kip urgently.

(Intermission in my bar in Bayeux - cafe au lait, and I managed to find the right money, but there's no prizes for understanding French here. It's taken for granted! Bloody good coffee, too.)

So I had a shower and a shave. OK, the room was on the third floor (and I had to lug my bags up four flights from that blasted basement), but it was the shower that took the biscuit. The controls were unfamiliar, but even when I exploited the full functionality, all I got was a trickle of water - lukewarm if not cold water - dribbling down from a wonky shower head about three centimetres from the wall. And it turned itself off every ten seconds. What I wanted was a steaming spray of hot stuff that I could luxuriate and sing the Marseillaise under.

I got my head down on my top bunk for a couple of hours, and then at dusk I wandered off down the rue in my shorts and t-shirt, everyone else rugged up against the chill of printemps, must have been all of 15 degrees. Humph, wimpish Parisians! Found a coin-op laundry and gave my washing a rinse, as the laundry dispenseur wasn't working, or at least not in a fashion that I could fathom. Internet cafe next door where I spent a pleasant hour.

Oh yeah, French keyboards aren't the same as English. The letters are swithced around, they have the squiggly characters in place of the numbers, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you I spent a whole minute searching for a question mark. I had almost decided that Parisans knew everything, when I found it hidden away in a corner.

A cold slab of pizza from le boulangerie across le rue as my clothes got a second go through the drier. Mmmm.

And then I got some serious sleep. The noises of my room-mates did not disturb me, though the fact that we were four in a closed room with duvets the only bedclothes was not my idea of sleeping comfort. Judging by the wy they looked, they came from a warmer climate and were happy with the heat.

I awoke for good about four in the morning, and because I had planned ahead, I was able to quickly change, grab my small pack and tripod and set off into the Paris predawn.

Talk about your atmosphere. It was cold, like about zero degrees, maybe less. Dark and the only folk around were latenight revellers herking into the gutters and supporting each other down the avenue. I loved it. No tourists and very little traffic. Took a few time exposure photographs of the rues, et Notre Dame.

And then I got lost. My $2.50 compass had become detached from its lanyard a day or so ago, and I'd lost the compass itself in the train coming in. Lost in France. I needed to head south and west along the Rue Saint Germain and Rue de Babylon, but after a while I wasn't sure of anything except that I was somewhere in the Latin Quarter. Honestly, I had no idea of direction at all.

But eventually I worked it all out. Napoleon's tomb at the Hotel des Invalides just before dawn and the sun rose as I photographed the Eiffel Tower on the Champs de Mars a few streets away. I almost had to pinch myself to believe that I was standing here looking at the thing. I didn't have to force a smile on a timed exposure - I was over the moon!

Bonjour to three soldats patrolling around the base of la tour avec submachine guns and wary faces. Cherry blossoms in a nearby parc. Crossed the Seine as the city began to wake up. Joggers and dogs straining under lampposts.

Lost again on the way to the Arc de Triomphe and I had to walk all the way up les Champs Elysees, time running out before breakfast back at the hostel finished and the thing itself closed.

Biut I made it. The Arc had a school group of teenagers chattering and horseplaying around the tomb of the inconnu soldat. Left a book there and then caught le Metro all the way to the Gare du Lyon, five minutes walk from my hostel.

Baguette and coffee, cold shower and hot shave, and then a taxi from the rank outside McDonalds to Gare St Lazare. The taxi driver had a beautiful Peugeot 607 and I found enough French to compliment him on son belle voiture. Lovely creamy leather seats on it.

Bought some internet, coffee and cheesecake at a nearby Starbucks and caught up with my email. I even managed to catch a bit of Jim Hawkins' show, but not the BookCrossing update - I had to scamper for my train.

As much as one can scamper when laden down with three or four hefty bags and a tummy full of chesecake, anyway.

Caught it with a minute or two to spare, managed to hoist my big bag onto the overhead rack, and settled down with my Moleskine as we made our way out through the suburbs. Before I knew it, we were in le pays, fields vert and villages straight out of two centuries ago. Picturesque ain't in it - these were fair dinkum dripping with atmosphere, and this time I don't mean le fragrance.

I lapped it up. Farmhouses with half-timbers and undulating roofs. Ruined monasteries on the ridges and delightful little churches in the middle of every village. Utterly gorgeous.

Caen came up soon enough. I hadn't been able to book a battlefield tour, or transport to St Malo to catch my ferry, but I could hire a car for the same amount. A tiny car. A manual car. A left-hand drive car.

It was with some trepidation that I fronted up to Avis across from the gare. A quick look at my drivers licence and credit card, and they wheeled out a tiny Opel - just enough room for me and my bags. I was kind of hoping they'd upgrade me to a decent-sized car for the same price. An automatic car. A right-hand drive car. Alas!

Somehow I managed to cram everything in and set off in la mode Australien, comme un kangaroo! I wasn't game to try a left turn for a while, and I made a slow tour of some of the less interesting parts of Caen at the head of a procession before I managed to find the ring road and then the highway to Bayeux. I even got up to 110kmh for a short space. Nervewracking stuff, and I'm sure people were duly impressed at the way I indicated changes in direction with my wipers, the stalks on the steering wheel being on unfamiliar sides. Hell, everything except the pedals was on the wrong side!

Bayeux was difficult, I've got to say. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, despite the maps I'd carefully printed out back home. The ring road whooshed me straight past the railway line (I couldn't see if there was a station there) and when I turned off for the town centre, I found myself in a system of narrow, one-way streets where I was leading a slow procession that occasionally stalled at intersections. So when I found the municipal car park in what I took to be the middle of town, I pulled in, found a "granny"* and propped.

I bought an hour, looked around, found the tourist information centre (a long and picturesque ramble from where the signs indicated it might be) and asked about the Hotel de Gare. I'd researched this one back in Australia as having cheap rooms, maybe twice as expensive as the "Family Home" hostel, but considering the variety of reviews of the hostel and the fact that I hadn't been able to contact them, and my mixed experience in the Paris hostel, I wanted to try the hotel first. The young lady behind the counter gave me a brochure and marked out a route to the station. I always ask if they "parlez-vous Francais?" but then communicate in French as much as possible. It gives me a chance to let my schoolboy French out of the box where it has lain for thirty years and I figure that the locals probably appreciate me making the effort. The last thing I want to do is play the arrogant tourist expecting everyone to talk my language.

I thanked her "Merci, ma belle choux" and set off. Passed the building where the Bayeux Tapestry is displayed. Might take a look in later on. Crossed the ring road to le hotel, and in the foyer found a selection of people who could speak English and could pass me onto the next person. Hmmm. Anyway, the final chap couldn't understand that even if the price was something I was happy with, that I'd want to stay in a double room when single rooms might well be available in the middle of town. Cripes, mate, I'm not going to wander the narrow cobblestones looking for a single room which may or may not be a few Euros cheaper when my fall back is a bunk in a dorm in a dodgy hostel, which is not that much cheaper anyway. He took me upstairs and showed me the room. A small, plain, clean and tidy room with a double bed. Looked like heaven to me. And they had a car park. He could stop trying to talk me out of it anytime he wanted, I was sold.

Maybe the French think a double bed is wasted on a single man. I dunno. I wasn't going to share my bed with anything but a book, but the thought of a comfortable and private room for a good price was a nobrainer for me.

I retrieved my car, found my way back - an adventure that I won't bother to describe except that I find it a lot easier to walk along Bayeux's narrow one way streets than to attempt to navigate a car through them - and unpacked. Lord, how happy I am now!

And even happier after a beer and a coffee and "le plat du jour" which turned out to be fried chicken and chips, but cooked in a way that bore no resemblance to anything found in Australia. The skerricks of onion adhering to the chicken skin were a dead giveaway. Absolutely delicious, every morsel, and I wolfed it down.

Very happy here. It's plain, cheap, and comfortable. Full of character and colour. Breakfast included and I'm happy to eat my dinner in the bar as a "plat du jour" with a cold beer.


*a "granny" is two empty car parking spaces nose to nose - you pull into one, mocve forward into the other and you may move off afterwards without having to reverse.

Comments:
Internet time in my week between Hong Kong and London was extremely limited, so I didn't get to make as many updates as I could have, and a lot of my time was spent on "housekeeping" type stuff, such as finding accomodation, driving instead of having someone do it for me, studying maps, doing my laundry...

The night flight from Hong Kong to Paris was brilliant. This was in a 747 and there was plenty of room. The service was exceptional and for the rest of my trip I looked back on it fondly, because even First Class on American Airlines wasn't as good, and I had quite a few Economy legs as well.

I was tired enough to sleep as soon as they had cleared away dinner. Hungry enough to demand fruit and icecream as a dessert, and I got it. That was around midnight Hong Kong time, but earlier on the previous day in Paris, to which I set my watch, if not my body clock.

My seat reclined all the way flat, or if there were a few degrees short of horizontal, I didn't notice them. I slept solidly until we were well over western Siberia and when I looked out of the window I was astonished at the population density below. There were lights enough to rival America's Midwest, with small town after small town. Certainly a lot more densely populated than just about anywhere in Australia.

We passed over St Petersburg in the dark, Copenhagen in the growing dawn with breakfast being served, and the we were turning over the northern suburbs of Paris.

Not much to immigration, not much except a long wait. Finding the station was a bit of a chore, and eventually I found myself at a stop for the shuttle bus to the station. More lugging of bags onto the bus, a hundred metre ride, and I had to haul my stuff off again. Honestly, I would have done better to keep my luggage trolley and keep on pushing inside the terminal than hang around in the cold.

Next time I'll bone up on terminal maps.

The plane got in at 0650 and so my trip to my hostel near Place de la Bastille took place in a steadily increasing rush hour. The French don't seem to be keen on wscalators or elevators in their subway stations, so the several interline transfers I had to make were conducted up and down narrow flights of stairs with Parisians rushing past me.

My rolling duffle bag rolls along as sweetly as ever you please, but turns into an absolute pig up and down stairs. I was in a lather by the time I found my hostel, and spitting chips when I found I had to spend the next five hours on the streets.

Pretty streets, but I was tired and needing a shower and as soon as I could check in at three in the arvo, I did so. Only to discover that bloody awful shower!

Oh well.

I'd tried to get all the way to Guernsey via Normandy on public transport, as well as take a guided tour of the invasion beaches, but I couldn't find any way to make all the pieces fit together in the time I had available and via the Internet. So I took a train to Caen (nobody even looked at my ticket, not in Paris, on the train or in Caen), and then a hire car for two days. Despite my trepidation, this worked out fine, once I found enough confidence to navigate the thing on the wrong side of the road, and it was glorious to have a bit of freedom to poke around as I pleased.

I'd printed out maps of Caen and Bayeux, but they weren't much use in the narrow streets of either town. Finding a place to stop and look at maps was impossible, and it was mostly a matter of press on and look for signs and landmarks. And hope for the best.

Once I got out on the motorways, it was very smooth sailing. Wide, well-signed roads. A delight to drive along, albeit about as boring as every other national highway.

Zero internet in Bayeux. There was an internet cafe listed, but it had gone belly-up some time before my arrival. So I took my laptop down to the small bar/dining room in the hotel, had a beer or two and the "plat du jour", and typed up my adventures. As you see above and in the next entry.

And it was days before I was able to upload them.

A day of muted tones. The green-grey of the English Channel, the universal grey of low clouds, the dark French gris of the squared stone Norman houses, the German grau of concrete fortifications, and my own dark Australian thoughts.

Around me in this little Bayeux bar are the cheerful tones of tourists from Pennsylvania and Fort Worth, the bright highlights of the dying day, and the mellow gold of my blonde beer.

�Welcome to our Liberators� says the sign on the door of the bar, and the tourists are made welcome, sixty years and more after liberation. Bayeux was the first French town to be released from the grey steel German grip of occupation, and although nobody in this bar could possibly remember the day, the collective memory lingers.

The invasion or �debarquement� is everywhere here. Street names recall the liberation, road signs point to the sites and the museums, and memorials and reminders abound. The tour buses meet the incoming trains in the station yard under my window, the green �Battlebus� among them, and the tourists on their day trips climb aboard, heavy-set middleaged war junkies, their skinny wives and their bored children. And one or two old men with grey in their hair and a flame in their eyes. You just know.

I had had my petit-djeuner of coffee, croissant and baguette here � the bar doubles as breakfast room in the mornings � and planned my day with the aid of the tourist map found in every shop in the district.

I mentally ticked off the highlights, but as it turned out, the day�s route depended more on the chances of French intersections than any conscious strategy.

Somehow I turned off the ring-road one roundabout too early, and my silver-grey Opel was pointed on the highway towards Cherbourg without me intending it.

�Eh bien�, I thought to myself, and settled on a back-up itinerary that reversed my plan. I couldn�t really go wrong. From here all I needed to do was turn off to the north at any time and I�d strike the invasion beaches somewhere or other.

In the meantime, I got up to a cruising speed of 110kmh on the excellent four-lane road and experimented with the cruise control. The highway was good, almost deserted, well signposted and about as bland as any other road in the Western world. High banks and screens of trees blocked out most of the countryside, and what little I could see was universally green with occasional nondescript cattle or tractors. At last I considered that I had gone far enough west, and lacking a big sign pointing me at my exact destination, I pulled off at the next exit.

In an instant everything changed. From a straight, boring highway to a narrow winding lane, and here I was virtually driving through farmyards, solid old buildings bare centimetres away on either side. A sneeze and I�d be bouncing off them. I was surprised there were no streaks of bright hire-car paint about wing mirror height. If I met an oncoming tour bus I'd be in trouble and if two of them ever passed each other in one of these narrow gaps, they'd be wedged tight.

The road itself was narrow, literally a lane wide enough for one vehicle at a time, and any passing would have to involve liberal use of the verges. I stayed focused on the right hand side of the road, because if I relaxed, took the centre and found myself suddenly confronted with oncoming traffic, I knew that I would automatically pull to the left as the local driver went to the right and we would meet somewhere in the middle with devastating results to my insurance excess.

I was all at once intimate with the countryside. Here cows were no longer distant shapes, but peered over farmyard gates at me. I could have stretched out a hand and stroked them. A touch on the horn and they would have turned and run.

The buildings almost jutted out into the road. They were solid square buildings, standing as they had for centuries, and if a narrow muddy cart track was now bitumen it didn�t matter to them. They had seen the royal troops of the Ancien Regime, the imperial standards of Napoleon�s battalions, the camions of the republic, the Mercedes staff cars of the Germans and the American half-tracks. A cautious Australian grappling with the gearstick of a hire car was neither here nor there.

Which pretty much summed up my approach to navigation. I knew I�d get there, the road was marked on my map, as I discovered when I finally found a place wide enough to pull off for a moment, but where exactly I was on it, ah, that was a mystery.

It was picturesque, no doubt about that, and I could see how the bocages or hedgerows that divided the fields had proven difficult for the Allies. The English hedges that they had trained amongst had been flimsy things compared to these broad, high banks overgrown with brambles, bushes and trees. Sometimes there were two side by side with a laneway running between. Perfect terrain for concealment and cover, and the German defenders had extracted a heavy toll on the invaders.

Soon enough I was on the coast road and then it was only a matter of minutes before I was entering the car park of La Pointe du Hoc. During the war, this high-cliffed cape had been heavily fortified for a battery of six 155mm guns, guns which could wreak havoc on the invasion beaches to either side. An assault force of American Rangers had scaled the cliffs, overhelmed the defenders, and held the position for two days, sustaining fearful causualties in the process. As it happened, the guns had not yet been emplaced but they were discovered nearby and destroyed.

Sixty years ago? Sixty days seemed more likely, judging by the terrain, one continuous sea of bomb craters and shattered concrete fortifications. I hadn't set foot on an actual battlefield before, and I gazed wide-eyed at the effect of tonnes of high explosive on the scene. It must have been hell on earth for a short time in the dawn hours of D-Day.

I left a small book in a niche under one of the emplacements. Thomas Carlyle's "On Great Men ", my tribute to those who had climbed the towering cliffs under fire and then held on against massive counterattacks.

There was a slight touch of drizzle in the air as I climbed back into my car. I had a light jacket with me, but it was really only good against damp and wind.

A few kilometres east and the road dropped down to the beach, the western end of Omaha Beach, a long straight stretch of sand, pale against grey sea, sky and steeply rising land. There was a square memorial, a grounded caission from the long-gone artificial harbour, and a walkway out into the sea. I took the walk way and rested on the end, the water lapping boot deep below.

Bloody Omaha. On each of the other four invasion beaches the amphibious assaults had gone more or less according to plan, but here on Omaha, several crucial factors had worked against quick success, and for a time the outcome hung in the balance with the invaders pinned down between a shallow bank of shingle and the incomig tide.

I tried to picture the desperate scene. Explosions, whining, chattering machine guns, artillery and mortars flinging up sprays of sand, stones and blood, equipment abandoned, sinking or burning, and all around the cries of dying or terrified men.

Just a beach now. A place for swimming, walking, ball games and kite-flying. I really had to stretch to conjure up the nightmare images that opened the film Saving Private Ryan .

I sighed back into my car and found my way to one of the private museums that compete all along the invasion zone. A collection of equipment, uniforms, documents and dioramas describing the days of Occupied France, the Invasion and Liberation. At one end was a simulated beach, with muted explosions and machine guns on the soundtrack. In mt time I've heard the real and deafening roar of modern explosives, and I wondered if this faint echo of the real thing could conjure up the memories for the veterans who still visit here.

I wonder. It's a rare veteran that talks of the true hoprrors of war. They'll describe the poker games, the songs, the crowded, uncomfortable quarters, the chow, their buddies... Anything but battle.

But when they talk about their comrades, all of a sudden there will be a catch in their voice, and they will trail off into mumbles and shrugs.

A short drive up the road lies the American Military Cemetery, one of the three enormous cemeteries in the district. Here are the billets of those who didn't come back, row upon row sleeping under white marble crosses and Stars of David. Far too many.

Tall flagposts bearing the Stars and Sripes watch over the graves, and here and there are small groups walking quietly. I am alone, but I cal feel the presence of all those young men, and I can imagine them with me, joking about the chow, smiling over a card game, shooting the breeze with their mates.

It is a serene and beautiful place, set just above the long expanse of Omaha. I set down a book on the low stone wall that divides the carefully maintained grounds from the grassy slope down to the sea. The Greatest Generation Speaks , a tribute to those who served. It was later caught and journalled by a visitor, who described their surprise and delight at finding a book they wanted to read sitting on a stone wall in the middle of a rain storm.

For the rain had begun in earnest as I walked by myself through the avenues. I didn't mind. "Rather parky here!" I heard a British visitor exclaim, but I didn't mind. Many of those lying here had been cold, wet, seasick and unhappy. But they had pressed on, confident that the only way back home, back to everything they were fighting for, lay ahead, up the hills from the beach on through Normandy, France, Germany and victory. How could I, living in the comfort and security that they had won for me, how could I complain about a bit of rain? So the drops came down, dripping over the brim of my cap and running down my cheeks.

This is quite possibly one of the best TRs I've read... keenly looking forward to the next instalment!

Excellent TR so far, Skyring. You bring the reader along with you well, great descriptions..

Normandy, 9 April 2006

My little upstairs room in the Hotel de la Gare in Bayeux was modest, but supremely comfortable. I don't need much to make me happy, and a double bed, a tacked on ensuite bathroom and a view of the station yard was more than enough for me.

I'd also stopped in at a French supermarket the day before and bought some necessities like laundry powder tablets, spring water, dried apricots, some sweets for the kids and some snacks for me.

I find myself fascinated by foreign grocery shops. Japan was just weird, but France had a frisson of differentness about it. Did they make their potato chips any different to those at home? Better buy a pack just to make sure... Oooh, look, a variety of Lindt chocolate that doesn't get exported to Australia. One pack for the kids and one for me.

I think I've discovered how I managed to put on a few extra kilos, and it wasn't just airline food!

On the other hand, the dried apricots were a surefire way of keeping myself regular. Customs and immigration tend to frown on fresh fruit, but dried apricots seem to get through without a challenge.

And I was trying to go around the world without drinking the local water. I'm sure that the places I went had eminently potable water, but all it needs is just one tummy bug at the wrong time...

Anyway, French television held no interest for me, and so I spent a fair bit of my evenings either writing on my laptop or reading a John Grisham thriller with a ready supply of snack food and Rooibos tea at my elbow.

Another activity was in filling up my travel journal. I have a supply of Levenger Circa notebooks, into which I paste ticket stubs, maps, postcards, all the little ephemera of travel. And I write notes and comments in it while the events are fresh in my mind. The Circa system allows me to add in or move around pages, and I carry a glue stick and use the scissors from my Swiss Army pocket knife to trim out photographs from brochures and paste them in. All in all, it's an excellent way to document my travels, but it has to be done on a regular basis, otherwise I put it off and I end up lugging home a kilogram or two of paper, which sits around until I have time to finish the task, which is never.

Sunday today, and the plan was to travel to St Malo on the Brittany coast where I had booked a ferry to Guernsey. On the map the journey seemed to be eminently do-able, with plenty of time left over for sightseeing.

So I got up early, packed up, ate up my breakfast croissant and drank down my coffee, handed the key back to my helpful French host, and filled up my little Opel with my luggage. I'd like to say that it settled down on its springs as I hefted the bags into the tiny hatchback, but honestly, it wasn't that much, maybe 70 kilograms total. It just felt heavy.

Goodbye Bayeux! I never did get to see the tapestry. Maybe another time.

I had one more task to do before I left Normandy. One of my trademark BookCrossing stunts is to wrap a book up in a couple of ziploc bags and wild release it into a body of water. Odd, but I have a remarkable catch rate from such releases. People see a book floating in a fountain or pond, they get curious about it, rescue it and journal it.

I had a copy of Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day in my luggage and I'd somehow left it behind on the previous day. So I had to go back to Omaha Beach. I selected the tiny village of St-Laurent-sur-Mer where a dramatic sculpture is placed on the beach sand.

Two ziploc bags around the book and with an equally dramatic gesture I hurl it into the ocean. What invariably happens next is that the book hits the water, bobs around in the waves for a few moments and then slides ashore, to be retrieved by a beach walker.

This book was no surprise, and like the soldiers of sixty years ago, it stumbled ashore and lay down on the sand. A few walkers looked at it, but I left before anybody picked it up.

I liked Omaha Beach. A long, wide beach of golden sand. A great place for the kids in summer, no doubt.

Although I tried to conjure up the incredible invasion fleet that arrived one June dawn, the hellfire reception, the carnage and the awful litter, I couldn't really do more than begin to imagine it. It's too nice a plage. Maybe a veteran of that day would have a more immediate reaction, but not I.

I got into my little German car and headed away.

As I munched on French potato chips from the open pack on the seat beside me - some odd spicy flavour that sounded better than the reality - I contemplated my options. In bare driving time, I was going to come up short. There just wasn't that much road between me and St Malo to fill in the hours. There was a side trip I wanted to take along the way, but I was still going to get to the ferry terminal a long time before sailing time at seven o'clock.

I was due to deliver the car there at three, but as the rental office was closed on Sunday adfternoons, I suspected that so long as the keys and contract were in the drop box on Monday morning, nobody was going to give a French fiddle as to when I actually dropped them in.

So I had a bit of time up my sleeve, and there was one place I wanted to visit, which wasn't too far out of my way.

So instead of turning south to St Lo, I kept going north on the Cherbourg road, alternating potato chips with swigs of pamplemousse flavoured mineral water.

The German defenders on the morning of the invasion ate their breakfast rashions either hot from a French farmhouse kitchen, or delivered to their blockhouses and gun emplacements. There is one marvellous tale told of a French resistance member who was watching the Germans as he had done every other morning for months and years beforehand. Ever morning at a certain time, a German soldier on a tubby old French horse would drop off the breakfasts at one fighting position after another, and the Resistance man, watching throug binoculars from a vantage point, would mark off the locations and how many meals were delivered.

The morning of the invasion the same German soldier came sleepily plodding along the same old path until he crested the ridge above the beach and stopped in amazement as he gazed at the huge invasion fleet stretching across the horizon and growing steadily closer. He then whipped his horse around and headed for the interior just before the shelling began. I guess the Germans along that stretch of beach went hungry that morning.

The men in the landing craft were probably even emptier. Despite the best efforts of the navy cooks, it was a rare soldier who wasn't seasick after hours (days in some cases) of bouncing around the English Channel in a flat-bottomed box.

Best off, food-wise, were the paratroopers. They had a hot dinner, got into their aircraft and dropped straight into battle on a full stomach.

And, speaking of paratroopers, my bonus destination this morning was the village of St Mere Eglise, where the airborne dropped in and found themselves in severe trouble. Instead of arriving by surprise in a sleeping village just after midnight, they discovered that the villagers were up and about fighting a fire in a barn near the church, along with the German garrison, who were alert and armed.

Many of the airborne troops were shot down before they hit the ground, the survivors were captured, and it wasn't until several hours later that the village was taken by fresh airborne troops who had landed some distance away. The village wasn't that important in itself - what made it crucial was the fact that it stood at the intersection of two major roads, control of which would give a tremendous advantage to either the Germans rushing up reinforcements to contain the invasion, or the Americans struggling to break out of their beachhead.

The village is almost exactly the same now as it was then. Some of the shops around the village square are now converted into souvenir shops, and there is a museum on the site of the barn, but otherwise it is untouched.

A little disappointing, somehow, compared to the dramatic bomb craters of Pointe du Hoc where I had commenced my quick tour of the Normandy battlefields, but how much more pleasant an outcome for the village to be liberated without being bombed flat.

I bought a postcard or two for my travel journal and then headed south. Back on the motorway, following the signs for St Lo and then St Malo. Nothing to it, really. I set the cruise control to 110kmh (the speed limit was actually 130kmh, but this only applied for drivers having held a French licence for more than two years) and fiddled with the radio.

To my vast delight I was able to catch BBC Radio Guernsey on 1116 AM, and it totally made my day to be able to hear the station live on air, instead of at second-hand via the internet. My favorite presenter, Jenny Kendall-Tobias, wasn't on, but just to listen to the station was enough for me - I was grinning hugely and singing along happily.

The motorway skirted Avranches and I turned west, following the signs for St Malo. A few kilometres further on I spotted the turnoff for my sidetrip, a quick detour to Mont St Michel, the extraordinary mediaeval monastery fortress on a rocky islet just offshore.

It was just like the pictures. Long curving causeway out to a steep cone of an island crowned by a cathedral. I didn't try to get all the way out to the island because access was limited and most visitors had to park and walk along the causeway. I'm sure I would have found it fascinating to explore the island, but I could see this consuming a fair chunk of the afternoon.

Instead I released a book by the side of the causeway, and to my delight the book was caught by a Scottish tourist and released outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam a few days later.

I'm not sure I mentioned it, but I released two books in Hiroshima, one of which was The Diary of Anne Frank and this fresh link was pure serendipity.

Back on the road and suddenly I was driving through the outskirts of St Malo. I'd been told that it was a remarkably beautiful town, but I couldn't see it. I found a petrol station to fill the hire car tank before dropping it off, and then it was a matter of following the signs to the prt and ferry terminal. I poked around a bit and found the rental car park, unloaded my luggage, stripped out the litter of snack food wrappers and soft drink containers which had somehow managed to cover the floor on the passengers side, took a series of digital photographs to prove I hadn't scratched the paint, and headed off for the ferry check in.

Once I'd unloaded my baggage, I had about four hours left before boarding, so I hoisted by backpack on my shoulders and set out for a belated lunch and maybe an internet cafe.

I turned a corner and that's when I discovered why St Malo was recommended to me. On the far side of the inner harbour rose a mediaeval walled city with huge old stone houses and a cathedral poking out of the middle. An amazing sight really, and for the next few hours I roamed around the sunny battlements, gazing out on one side to a remarkably pleasant bay liberally strewn with beaches and islands, and on the other side to the narrow streets of the old town. There were tourists aplenty, and when I made my way down into the town proper, I discovered that the streets were lined with souvenir shops, restaurants, boutiques, and about a million icecream stalls, all aimed at the well-heeled traveller.

But there was no charge for looking, and I did plenty of that. Another place to come back and visit when I'm rich.

The ferry to Guernsey was one of our Australian-designed Incat catarmarans. I've been aboard several of these ships, and they are remarkably comfortable vessels. This one seemed to be full of English tourists returning home after a weekend in France, and I rejoiced to be back with my own language once again. My command of the French language is tres petit, and like the Japanese immigation officials, I shied away from anything much deeper than "Bonjour" and "Merci".

Luckily the onboard cafe took Euros, probably at a ruinous discount, otherwise I would have gone hungry. I had a decent serve of hot curry as we pulled away from the coast, and for the hour or so it took to make the crossing to Jersey, I immersed myself in John Grisham as the sun set and the twilight deepened.

Jersey wasn't much more than a floodlit waterfront by the time we got there, and I presented myself, along with a few other foreigners to the immigration official who boarded the ferry to stamp our passports. Makes a change from Dover or Heathrow, I guess.

Guernsey was another half hour away, and getting dark and cold as I dragged my bags off the ferry and along the front to my hotel, a tiny little bed and breakfast place for thirty quid a night.

I made myself a cup of proper English tea and watched some proper British television before turning out the lights. I'd had a wonderful day, but tomorrow looked set to be even better!