In spite of spending a lazy 6 days on the QM 2, I still felt a bit ‘lagged’, floating in a sort of timeless vacuum, not quite able to believe it was all over - not quite able to believe that I had done it. Not quite able to believe that I had seen the canals of Venice, the Acropolis in Athens, the Pyramids in Egypt, the remnants of the Raj in Bombay, the beaches of Goa, the French side of Pundicherry, the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, the islands of Penang and Lingkawi in Malaysia, the designer buildings in Shanghai, the trains in Tokyo, the trams in Hong Kong, the Hollywood sets in Los Angeles, the life on the streets of San Francisco, the canyons of Colorado, the towers and trees on Manhattan Island - and all in a mere 80 days. Sometimes I have to read this blog to remind myself of what I saw and where.

Enough, enough. I would like to thank all those who sent comments/e-mails of encouragement which kept me and the blog going. Some of you have commented on my style of writing and said I should do more. I am considering expanding the 80 Days blog, adding pictures and publishing some sort of journal/book. I would be grateful if you could tell me whether you think that this is a great idea, or that I have got my head up my arse and am getting a bit carried away in all the excitement

Well, as Woody Woodpecker used to say ” That’s all folks”

Phil

PS - Just in case you were wondering, I got back to my home in France on Monday morning - Exactly 80 days after leaving.

PPS - I’ve just added up the distances and I covered a little under 45000 km for the whole journey (excluding walking, so call it 50000km)

Here it is

The first morning I woke up and got up quite early, ready to have a fried breakfast, a wander round the boat – that will take two days – and then to study the activities that are available for the day. Breakfast was good, although ate too much, Discovered the library, where there are some Internet terminals – what ! 50 cents a minute – that’s ……. that’s $30 per hour ! But I take at least an hour every day just updating my blog. Here I should state that I had intended using the cruise to catch up on the account of my epic train journey as well as a daily report of events on the boat. The budget was getting very tight by this stage and a quick calculation said I was going to spend $200 just blogging. “ Aah come on you miserable old sod ” I can hear you say, but don’t forget I’m supposed to be relaxing and winding down and ……..oh go on then, I’ll see what I can do.

2 :15 Table-tennis competition – adults only ( sounds interesting ) Yeh , put me down for that . Well I went along to this, got drawn against an american who knocked me out in the first round – he went on to lose in the final – serves him right.

Realising you were a few hours ahead of me I went back to the library to see if I had any E-mails. Now when I say I went back to the library, I did, but not quite directly. One of the slightly annoying things about this super liner, is when you start at the right end of the boat but think you are at the wrong end and walk the full length of corridor past 280 cabin doors until you get to the right end which is of course the wrong end and you go upstairs to the library only to discover its the art gallery, and the bloody library is 280 cabin doors back where you came from. I must admit to doing this on more than one occasion. What’s the position tonight for dining. I see I have been invited to dine in the late sitting ( 20:30 which suits me ) and there is a place for me in the Brittania Suite – table 308. Dress Code is ‘Elegant Casual’ which is defined as ‘Jacket and tie’ for men ( a bit more restricting than for the women who only have to refrain from wearing jeans ). Well that’s tough, ‘cause I ain’t got either. I do however have a brand new pair of trousers, and shoes, which you may remember I bought in Macy’s in San Jose especially for this occasion. So with my smart new pale-pink shirt ( bought, you’ve probably forgotten, on a street in Mumbai) I thought I looked presentable and passable. I did go and see the ‘Maitre D’ to check my attire was not going to cause any major ruptions, heart attacks, or howls of derision, and he said it was fine, as long as no other guests complained, which luckily for them they didn’t. During the week there were two other nights like this when I dined at table 308 which was made up of an english couple celebrating their Diamond Wedding anniversary, a couple from New York – she was a judge, he was a writer, and a third couple, an american and his wife from Cuba. During the three nights we had some quite interesting conversation, in spite of some hearing problems with the octogenarians, they were shall we say, pleasant company.The dress code for the other three nights was ‘Evening Dress and Ball Gowns’ so I decided not to push my luck, but to eat on the upper decks in one of the three restaurants where you could dine in more casual attire . The food in all the restaurants was excellent, particularly considering the numbers that were being catered for, and the range from ‘Haute Cuisine’ to ‘Thai Chicken Curry’ to ‘Pasta with giant Mussels’ to ‘Fish and Chips’ and ‘Bangers and Mash’ in the Pub at lunch-time, meant you could eat what you felt like eating at any meal time. As I’ve mentioned the Pub, I will admit to spending the odd hour or so there both before and after dinner, usually on the same bar stool with my own personal bowl of nibbles, drinking a glass of rather excellent draught Boddingtons ( before dinner ) or an Amaretto on ice (after dinner). By Tuesday both girls behind the bar knew me by name and charged my account without needing to see my card.On Tuesday I woke up at 05:45 ? It feels later than that – in fact my watch was upside down and it was actually 12 :15 ! ” Bloody Hell, I’ve missed breakfast”, was my first thought. My second being ” Bloody Hell, I’m going to miss lunch if I don’t get moving”. I think my body was giving me a message because on the following day I didn’t wake up until 11:30. I was in an inside cabin with no windows, sorry portholes, which didn’t help. So on Thursday I slept with the bathroom light on and set my alarm.

Its D-day. Time to get on board the largest passenger liner in the world. I get up early, finish packing, have breakfast at a diner round the corner ( Eggs Benedict), do my blog, do some E-mails. Can’t think of anything else I can do and can’t put it off any longer, so I hail a cab and ask for the new dock in Brooklyn, and can he go over Brooklyn Bridge ? “Sure.”

Well its massive, and I mean massive. Its not just a floating hotel, its a whole street, a small town on the water. The entrance is a lobby which goes up three floors, sorry decks, with columns, sweeping staircases, wide corridors spinning off in all directions - mindblowing. I am shown to my cabin which is plenty big enough since, looking at the schedule of what’s on I won’t be spending much time there.

I start reading all the gumf. Christ, how many restaurants and bars are there? They’re all over the place - must be ten restaurants and as many bars How many decks ? Twelve. How many lifts? Ten. How many cabins ? Two Thousand. How many staff ? One thousand. This is a stand alone self supporting entity which can, and does exist for several days without any input or contact with the outside world (other than radio)

There’s a schedule of events and activities which provides something of interest to everybody - concerts, presentations, displays, sports, talks and whatever else you can think of. You can also just laze around doing nothing except sleep, read, eat, and drink. If you don’t fancy one of the main restaurants, you can eat Italian or Oriental or Carvery.

I’m so awestruck with all this that I have to lie down. I wake up and sense that we are on the move. So I rush up onto the nearest deck to say goodbye goodbye to New York New York. It seems to take ages for the skyscrapers to disappear and for the suspension bridge to glide over the top of us. That’s the last land we will see for nearly a week

I don’t think that over the next 5 days I am going to have any difficulty having a nice relaxing time.

                                                           So I booked myself in
                                                           To the Holiday Inn
                                                           Which was just two blocks 
                                                           Away from the docks

Unfortunately, what I had forgotten was that New York City is more than just Manhattan and as I discovered, the new QM terminal is in Brooklyn which is over the bridge with the same name, on to Long Island and then cut back towards Governors Island. Still, at least I’m sort of in the right place and will of course leave in plenty of time, as you may note I have become accustomed.

On my search for a non-existent pier, I am reminded of the american obsession with fitness,( only surpassed by their obsession with eating ), by a steady stream of joggers. Everywhere I look there are joggers to the left of me, joggers to the right. All different shapes and sizes, but the majority having one thing in common - they are all in bodies which were not designed to run - not at any speed. Now why can’t people just accept that physically they are not meant to run. Those who are vertically challenged ( short arses like me ) don’t try and leap over the high jump. Those who are not over endowed with muscular power ( little weeds like me ) don’t go in for weight-lifting. So why do those who look like they would have difficulty walking at anything above spritely, persist in painfully attempting to run a 5000 metres pretending they are born in Ethiopia and it all comes naturally ?

Nobody seems to have even heard of the Queen Mary, let alone know where it leaves from. So I consult the Cunard website which of course I should have done in the first place, because it tells me exactly where it is and how to get there.

For the next six days I am going to be on a boat, so how do I spend the afternoon? On a boat - a cruise round the island of Manhattan which turned out to be very interesting and informative, and also gave my little legs a rest - I had walked to the pier down 42nd Street.  Here I saw a black guy with a stall selling all sorts of stuff. He was sitting on a box fiddling with a Rubix? Cube. I asked him how long he’d been doing it. He grinned and said “All day, man”. I smiled, tapped him on the shoulder and said “See you here tomorrow”  

Went out that night and found a really good  Soul-food restaurant where the food lived up to the description on the menu “Creamed mushrooms” followed by “Meatloaf” - I’m a native New Yorker.

Finally got a few hours sleep. Ominously, there is no first call for breakfast from the Diner. Apparently its closed for the whole journey. What! That will mean nothing to eat for over 24 hrs, and this bloody train is late so we won’t be in New York until at least 9 o’clock tonight. Come back Indian Railways - all is forgiven!

Its just turned 5:00 pm and I’m beginning to feel a little bit peckish - still don’t know what happened with the diner. Nobody will say - sounds a bit fishy to me. The snack bar has sold out of everything and now we’re two hours late. Scenery today not very interesting - woods and fields. But it does show how much of the US is not built on - there’s miles and miles of space.

Catering supplies finally arrive and in desperation I queue for half an hour for a delightful micro-waved cheeseburger. It looks like we will finally arrive at about 10:00 tonight - 86 hrs after setting off. That’s like catching the train from Angouleme to Paris 34 times in a row. Its a bloody big country.

It’s 3.30 in the morning and I’m awake as we arrive in Salt Lake City, Utah. We stop here and can get out to stretch our legs. The next time I wake up it’s raining and everything is a sort of slimey limey colour - it’s not very pretty.

Now we’re climbing our way up the valley again, closely following the river. Over the crest onto a more dessert-like landscape with telegraph poles leaning, blown by the wind, and a wall of rock perfectly squared off like a giant cut-out. The train slows down and stops at Green River, which is Hicksville, Utah.

Next we’re in Colorado, canyon country, Glenwood Springs to be precise - the stop for Aspen. Onwards and upwards we follow the river into Colorado Canyon. Magnificent, absolutely mind-blowing. Its hard to believe that this was all done by nature. As Peter Cook would say ”What a wonderful thing it is nature - a truly wonderful thing”

From here to Denver it’s a slow journey due to work on the line, some of which is single-track, and we have to keep stopping. What should have taken 6 hours took 8, but can’t complain - I couldn’t have spent the time in more beautiful surroundings

I don’t think it does but in this case… I got a surprise E-mail this morning - a reply to my enquiry about the Queen Mary, which I’d given up on, saying there was a cabin available.
Hold it, hold it - don’t get too excited yet. But after several phone calls I have the chance of an inside cabin, with single person supplement, of course. So what do I do? Well I was rather looking forward to it, as you probably gathered, and …er you only live once, and …. er I will probably never have another chance and … oh go on “Book it Danno ”

So, now I’m on the train crossing the Sierra Nevada. Quite dramatic scenery as it slowly wends and winds up through the forest like a giant silver snake through the undergrowth. Near the top and there is still some snow around in sheltered spots. Conifer trees for miles and deep gorges. We are 7000 ft up at the summit - enough for ski-ing ? Here’s the answer - a ski resort. Not open of course and looking a bit sad, a few runs and lifts but nobody around. As the guy in front said “Dere ain’t even a dawg crossin’ der street”

We start the descent. It really is a big and beautiful country and totally unspoilt. Only 200 miles from San Francisco. It’s difficult to imagine anything being done to ruin this landcape, but then its difficult to imagine SF as a fishing village. Maybe one day, this will all be one giant alpine shopping mall

We spent an interesting, if rather exhausting evening at the the house of some neighbours, who had invited my friends to dinner( I was to be included as an honoured guest). Well there was a certain amount of interest shown in my travels, but also quite a lot of that annoying habit, quite common amongst americans, of asking you a question in such a way that they can tell you where they have been / what they have done 

The host then put on a rather embarrassing performance describing how he met and , in his mind, just totally bowled over his wife to be, because “he was the man” - an expression he kept repeating. He must have been either pissed or stoned, or maybe just Californian. My friends were very apologetic but I said it was good entertainment  and anyway the food was pretty good.

Sunday is a drive to Monterey and Carmel, and along 17 mile drive, which is California’s version of The Bishop’s Avenue.( but about 16 miles longer) - a private drive that runs along the the coastline with multi-million $ properties scattered along its length. Carmel is smaller than I expected and looks like it’s actually a film set or off a chocolate box. We then motor onto Route 1 going in the direction of LA. What amazing scenery. Big rolling hills dropping dramatically into the sea where results of previous shifts of rock lay as they had fallen. A few beaches and several rocky coves. Not a sign of a domestic dwelling - totally unspoilt. I didn’t realise there was so much open space in California It would be nice if they kept it that way.

I train it back to San Francisco, and book in a hotel near the station avoiding the need for and expense of a taxi ride in the morning. I have spent several weeks deliberating on how to get back on my last leg of the journey - crossing the Atlantic. One option I have been considering and favouring is to return on the Queen Mary - no, not the one which is being looked for on the corner of 5th St and Pine Avenue in Long Beach, but Cunards latest liner. I have been waiting for the price for a cabin to drop so I could jump in at the last minute as they were desperately trying to sell tickets, and get a bargain. The best laid plans….. My tactics were unfortunately unsuccessful, and I spent several hours in the afternoon, only to be told that the boat was fully booked. Oh well, some other time then - they were going to charge me double the rate for single occupancy so the budget would have been blown. It would have been a nice way to finish though. 

          “Now I’m sitting at the railway station
           Got a ticket for my destination
           mmm-m-m-mmm
           On a tour of one night stands
           My suitcase and guitar in hand……

Well not quite - no guitar, oh and no one night stands.

I am taking a slight deviation here and going to San Jose to see some old friends who we met in Geneva and who we have known for nearly 20 years but havn’t seen for about 10. So your blog writer is having a couple of days off - will be back, on the train.

Now, do I know the way to San Jose?