Dadgummit! Carolyn, I'm not at home; I'm in Texas right now. And on June 6 I will be leaving for Australia for a month. I would LOVE to meet you, and I'm sad that I will miss this opportunity. But thank you for thinking of me!

Didn't we miss each other previously -- a couple of years ago? Sometime you will just have to come see me specifically! :-)

Enjoy your trip. I'm not sure if there are other RPers living in Hawai'i, but I do know there are several who visit. One day, someday, I hope the dwellers and comers can get together. It can be done!

I haven't received your e-mail, Carolyn. But I do notice a peculiar lag, sometimes. I checked my Inbox and saw TWO messages from Vee! I never know if anyone gets the e-mails I send unless they respond immediately or tell me in this forum. It's frustrating.

Again, Carolyn, I hope your stay in Hawai'i is excellent. Tell us about it when you get back. Didn't you go to Paris recently? I want to hear about that, too. I will post about my Australian adventure when I get back home. I am going to Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne; but, alas, I will not be getting anywhere near Kath's Adelaide.

Frieda, I am, of course, disappointed; but how wonderful for you to get to make a trip to Australia. I would really like to do that and to go to New Zealand as well. Have you been there?

Yes, we have just come back from a 25th anniversary trip to Paris where we saw some things we hadn't seen before; made two day trips, one to Chartres and one to Giverny to see Monet's house and gardens; and went to Bayeux for a couple of days, one spent on an all-day, small-van tour of the D-Day beaches and the other seeing the Bayeux tapestry and the cathedral.

I'm not really such a globe trotter as this would seem. My daughter travels in her job and accrues mega free airline miles. She is repaying me for delivering her son to school three days a week and letting him hang out with us during the summers by giving my husband and me as well as her husband, her son, and herself tickets to Hawaii. My two stepdaughters are taking themselves but staying with us. Fortunately, we all like each other.

We have found adjoining rooms with kitchenettes in a hotel that doesn't charge for extra people, so maybe it won't be too bad. We will have the hotel bill, meals, and entertainment; and I haven't even got the bill from Paris yet. Thank goodness for a Capital One credit card that gives free air miles for all spending and doesn't charge a foreign currency transaction fee.

I hope you have a super trip and do, please, give us a report. Traveling is my second favorite thing, right after reading.

Carolyn, what a wonderful payback from your daughter! Sounds like you are getting a good deal all around. Family trips seem, to me, to be some of the most memorable.

It will be interesting to hear what you think has been done to your Honolulu. I have a favorite collection of "before and after" photography books: what Waikiki once was and what it is today, that sort of thing. I sure wish, sometimes, that time traveling was possible because I tend to like history more than the present (overlooking all the unpleasant facts of life as they were in the past). I guess that's why I often prefer reading to traveling, although the latter provides all sorts of lagniappe and nothing beats actual experience.

An anniversary in Paris! Incurable romantic that I am, I am also a rather eccentric tourist; so although I lived in Paris for three years and I visited and saw many of the traditional sites in Paris and northern France, I have to confess that most didn't make a particularly profound impression. I remember the oddball things, like how the grounds of the church in Boulogne were used as a lovers' tryst, with the unsightly scatterings of trash and, er, human waste. I also remember smells -- Bayeux is the not-unpleasant mingling odor of fish and baking sweet pastries. What about the Tapestry? Oh yes, it's very old, intricate, intriguing, and very long. I'm hopeless; but I treasure my own impressions, though they don't make particularly good copy. I bet you recall some quirky details, too!

I have not been to New Zealand. I particularly want to see the South Island and the Southern Alps. It will be tantalizingly close (relatively), but I won't get that way, this time. I have been to Australia before but only as a quick in and out of Sydney. A month in Australia will hardly do that vast country justice, but it's a start!

Vee, if you are reading, your photos came through beautifully! Thanks to your DH. I will respond, in kind, as soon as I climb the learning curve. :-)

Tis the season! So many are traveling to interesting places. I can hardly believe that this is supposed to be a down year for the industry. Offhand, others have mentioned as destinations: Quebec, the Grand Canyon, Pembrokeshire. Where else?

So let me get this straight. Carolyn has just come back from Paris, and is now going to Hawaii, but she's disappointed because she's not going to be able to meet Frieda because she is going to Australia at that time.

OK. You win. I am officially jealous.

yes, but Martin, you DID get to go to Turkey for the eclipse.....

I am not such the world traveler as the rest of you. I have seen a great deal of the US, including Alaska and Hawaii (twice, while my sister's husband was stationed there - only had to pay airfare).

My children, however, have been around:
Daughter - Russia when it was still USSR; Australia twice: once for a semester of school and then for almost a year just living there; Ireland twice.
#1 son studied in London for one summer
#3 son went to Paris for weekend!! with his fiancee - talk about romance! Greece and Italy will be their honeymoon
#4 son travels all over the US to all sorts of sports venues and events for his job.

My big plan for this year is a schooner/windjammer trip off the coast of Maine in September.

Veronicae, your windjammer trip sounds great.

Martin, I'm sitting here howling with laughter. You guys can hop over to the continent the way we drive from state to state.

And, Frieda, I've been back to Hawaii a few times since I lived there (gosh, can it be) fifty years ago, so I know "my" Honolulu isn't there anymore. When watching the movie Pearl Harbor, during the scene that shows the young people at Kau Kau Korner, I wanted to stand up and shout, "I was there! I've eaten there!" and at that age, too.

Do you know if there is a bookstore handy that has a section of Hawaii-based fiction? I'm taking the last of my Morland books with me because they are nice and thick, but I don't think the atmosphere will transfer too well.

As for France, one memory that will stick is that of an elderly woman who got on the train at Caen (the only stop from Bayeux to Paris) and bawled my husband out in rapid-fire French because he was sitting in what she said was her seat. There were plenty more available, and if there was assigned seating, we couldn't find any evidence of it on our tickets. She did sit elsewhere but not happily, and it would have been a major move for us as we were surrounded by luggage. He kept saying, "English, I only speak English," and after a few minutes she switched to perfectly understandable English, but you could tell it was under protest--rotten American tourists!

I find I have no concept of Hawaii, maybe because it doesn't come onto the 'British' horizon much, so I have little idea of what it is like. Should I have a picture of swaying palms and smiling maidens or is it all Coca Cola signs, Macdonalds and Main St US?
I don't think Pembrokeshire is quite in the same league as Paris or the Grand Canyon. And I enjoy travel books because I never go anywhere exotic; I think my passport expired in about 1980.
Carolyn, my daughter and boy-friend had hoped to spend their holiday in the Lake District of NW England but found it was cheaper to take an 'all-in' break in Turkey; the sun is also on offer there!

Young people in the UK certainly travel to far-away places these days often as part of a Gap Year between school and Uni. I sometimes wonder how much they 'see' of the countries they visit.
I remember the DD travelled through Cambodia some years ago (Beware Landmines) and was photographed by the locals as a strange and exocic being. A group of English speaking girls palled-up with each other and she was quite upset to find some Irish girls refused to exchange addresses as they said in normal circumstances they would never have spoken to her. Btw these girls were heading straight to NYC where they said it was not necessary to have even a visa let alone a work permit to settle there. I wonder if this is still the case?
Frieda I had to look up lagniappe as I had never heard of it and find it is a word used only in the US . . .which made me feel better.

lagniappe, is, I believe, Creole-the language of New Orleans-the added extra little goodie given by shopkeepers when a purchase is made. When I bought books in a used book shop, the storekeeper tossed a little leather bookmark in-when we bought table linens in a kitchen shop we were offered unbelievable, sinfully rich pecan chocolates.

I forgot Turkey! So, Mr Eclipseman, you have no reason to be jealous.

Carolyn, I love the little stories 'coz they're the ones I remember. I can picture the woman at Caen spitting French, and it was such an imposition for her to switch to English. Ha! I confess, though, I pulled such a stunt myself in the Gar du Nord. This American woman was frantically asking everyone in sight, "Do you speak English?" She came up to me, but a perverse impulse made me give her a poker face and my best Gallic shrug -- I had been working on it for months because my first reaction is to smile, which is very unFrench. She turned from me, never knowing that I was being temperamental; but I think about it with some shame, still.

Re bookstores: I depend, unimaginatively, on Barnes & Noble in Ala Moana Center and Borders on Ala Moana Blvd, both of which do have Hawaiian special-interest sections. I can't think of any bookshops on Kalakaua or Kapahulu Avenues, which are closer to the area where you will be staying. It doesn't mean there aren't any -- it's just that I'm not very observant sometimes -- though I must say that independent booksellers on O'ahu tend to be either heavily into the religious mode or adult-themed literature...but not in the same shop, of course!

Vee, I will be sending you some pictures that may give you some idea what Hawai'i is really like. It actually varies quite a bit from island to island. I'll show you my backyard which has no view whatsoever because it's surrounded by a wall of vegetation. But you can see my passionfruit vines that are threatening to take over the cabana, and the hibiscus that aren't quite as tall as the house now because we chopped them off at ground level back in March. I think I can show you the damage to our prize koa tree.

Cece, that's right: lagniappe is pure Luzianna. It can mean what you've described and it also can be extended to mean any unexpected bonus or fillip. Everywhere I've been I adopt words and phrases; and once they become natural to me, they tend to pop out even when I'm talking with someone who would not ordinarily understand them. But lagniappe is a such a useful word! Really!!

Frieda, the Ala Moana Center will do me fine and give me an excuse to go there. I remember fondly the macadamia nut pie in the Pineapple Room at Macy's from a couple of years ago.

Yes, we did miss each other then, and I think it stemmed from the e-mail problem.