At Home Magazine

The search for holiday home bargain buys is expanding and there are some potential goldmines to be found in the old Eastern bloc. But always look before you leap.

It seems all the world is a holiday hot spot these days but nowhere is it more true than in Europe where former Eastern bloc countries are now clamouring to join the European Union and to do that they have to make themselves ultra attractive to the West.

From Conquistadors to Aztecs, we follows the 'Route of Corts' the old road from Veracruz on the east coast to Mexico City, with a guide who knows his history and architecture as well as where to eat well and dance. There's nothing like getting off on completely the wrong foot, and Belinda from Tufnell Park managed a spectacular gaff in her first few words. She said that Corts had 'discovered' the cities of the ancient Aztecs. Whoops. "Corts!" snorted Manuel.

It's not easy finding the ideal family holiday destination at the busiest and most expensive time of the year: half-term and summer holidays. But it can be done, says Joanna Symons, and here are some great choices.

Bungee jumping in New Zealand, cycling in Morocco, riding in Kyrgyzstan, you name an adventure and we'll find the holiday for you, says Minty Clinch.

In an ever- shrinking world, global gypsies have never had it so good. Riding in Kyrgyzstan, lemur spotting in Madagascar, cycling in Morocco, hiking in Catalunya or Peru or Nepal?  Take your pick, get online and book it up.   It sounds simple, and in theory it is, though making the best choice from a surfeit of options is a little trickier.

Take lemur spotting, for example. The engaging primate is a Malagasy one-off and it's impossible not to spot it when it's sitting on your breakfast table trying to steal your rolls.  In our eco-conscious age, feeding wildlife is actively discouraged, but the ring-tailed lemurs in the Berenty Reserve aren't interested in notices telling tourists not to share their food.  It follows that every visitor is guaranteed more digital images of Madagascar's most photogenic animal than they could possibly need.

This begs the question as to what to do for the rest of your visit. On an island two and a half times the size of Great Britain, the options are far-flung and wide-ranging, though all involve nature in the raw. For a start, there are 51 species of lemur, including the sifaka, known as the 'dancing lemur' for its silly walk, and the nocturnal grey mouse lemur. Then there are the baobab trees, with their distinctively swollen trunks topped by disproportionately tiny branches. There are radiated tortoises, fruit bats, huge ant colonies and rare birds like Appert's Greenbul.  These creatures are to be found in diverse habitats, wetlands, forests, deserts and plains. Last but not least, there are tropical shores lapped by warm seas.

For most people, making the most of these attractions in a couple of weeks means buying a package, but whether it should  be with an intensely specialist company like Naturetrek or one offering a broader picture like Explore Worldwide depends on your priorities.  In either case, you will be part of a soft adventure group of about 16, travelling by bus with a British guide, supported by well-informed locals. As is mandatory with ecotourism, you will spend a lot of time hiking through dense tropical forest and waiting your turn to photograph very small well-concealed animals.  And you will get a couple of days on the beach.

Unless you're a nature fanatic, you might imagine that Explore would be the more relaxing option. Not so. Having road-tested both companies, I discovered, to my surprise, that the Naturetrek clients mixed dedication with a sense of fun, whereas the Explore ones seemed to feel that sitting chatting over a beer was a waste of quality home video time.

It took a two-week trip on horseback through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan to explode another of my preconceptions.  Naively, I'd imagined that riding over rough terrain would require a certain basic skill. Quite wrong. I can now promise that anyone with the endurance to spend 10 hours a day in the saddle can embark on a Wild Frontiers Nomad trip with total confidence. When they needed to stop their horses, four out of the eight clients had no option but to pull and pray, but they not only survived, they had a wonderful time.

This trip is a genuine adventure, a chance to explore a small isolated Central Asian Republic with no industry beyond a single gold mine and no visible means of support beyond the mixed flocks of wild horses, goats, sheep and yaks that roam the sunlit uplands in summer. We met no other tourists and no townies on our journey, only the local herdsmen who graze their livestock on the high pastures between June and September. Sometimes we stayed in their yurts, but more often we camped on the banks of clear mountain streams, eating delicious stews or fried river fish prepared on a single gas ring by our expert Kyrgyz cook, before falling asleep to the sound of horses chomping on rich grass.

Horseback holidays are increasingly popular, but they'll never match cycling trips in the adventure league tables. On the grounds that I, like almost everyone else, can ride a bike, I signed up for an Exodus tour of the Jebel Sahro & the Draa Valley in southern Morocco. Whereas horse riding holidays appeal almost exclusively to women, cycling attracts a mix of men, women and couples of all ages and levels of fitness.

Exodus grades its tours from A, suitable for anyone who can ride a bike, to E, recommended only to mountain biking gods and goddesses. Ours was B/C, with B suited to occasional cyclists and C to confident riders who train two or three times a week. In the D and E categories, the clients bring their own top level bikes with front and back suspension and disc brakes, but our group hired local Rockhoppers with front suspension, much needed on hostile off-road terrain. Mind you, disc brakes would also have been reassuring on testing mountain descents.

Most adapted their rental machines with pedals and saddles brought from home, plus cycling shoes, padded shorts and padded gloves – essential to reduce numbness in the hands.   We cycled on five of the six days, covering distances ranging from 40km to 96km, often over puncture-inducing rocks in heat that reached 35°C at midday, but always with the option of loading the bikes onto the backup vehicles in case of need.  We overnighted in Berber hotels, comfortable and atmospheric with brightly coloured carpets and hangings, and dined on couscous and tajine on alternate nights, washing both down with the warm red wine we carried with us to avoid the disappointment in alcohol-free hotels.

That wouldn't happen in Catalunya where Inntravel combine castles, coves and vineyards in a gentle 7-day walk on inland plains and coastal paths, the easiest of several itineraries in a part of Spain that is known for its gastronomy. At the tougher end of a walking scale that runs from 1 to 3, they launch into the rugged limestone heights of inland Andalucia, taking in mountains, flowery meadows and cork-oak woods.  With 80 walks in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Slovenia and Norway, they reasonably claim to have a schedule to suit everyone. They arrange accommodation and luggage transfers and supply such detailed route notes that the clients can go it alone without fear of getting lost.

Another fresh aspect of adventure travel is the introduction of specialist family brochures. Running on a 'best school in the world' ticket, the Adventure travel Company leads the field in small group expeditions targeted at children with parents in tow.  Predictably, many of their trips are animal-led – camel and donkey riding, dog sledding, turtle or tiger watching, whale or dolphin spotting – but the educationals include Feluccas and Pharaohs, Dracula's Mountains, Headhunters of Borneo, Good Morning Vietnam and Nuts about Brazil. They cater for the whole family, with programmes for infants, kids and teenagers.  As for the parents, they just have to adapt as best they can. 

Eco holidays (including Madagascar)
Naturetrek: 01962 733051; www.naturetrek.co.uk
Explore Worldwide: 0870 333 4001; www.explore.co.uk
Wildlife Worldwide: 020 8667 9158; www.wildlifeworldwide.com

Riding Holidays
Wild Frontiers: 020 7736 3968; www.wildfrontiers.co.uk
Ride Worldwide: 01837 82544; www.rideworldwide.com
Equine Adventures: 020 8667 9158; www.equineadventures.co.uk
Inntravel European Riding Holidays: 01653 617930; www.inntravel.co.uk
American Round Up: 0870 747 2624; www.americanroundup.com
Cycling Holidays Exodus: 0870 240 5550; www.exodus.co.uk
Explore Worldwide: 0870 333 4001; www.explore.co.uk
Inntravel: 01653 617722; www.inntravel.co.uk

Hiking and Trekking
HF Holidays: 020 8905 9388; www.hfholidays.co.uk
ATG Oxford: 01865 315 678; www.atg-oxford.co.uk
Walks Worldwide: 01524 242000; www.walksworldwide.com
Crystal Active: 0870 240 7545; www.crystalholiday.co.uk
KE Adventure: 017687 73966; www.keadventure.com
Headwater's Worldwide Walking Holidays: 01606 720033; www.headwater.com

Family Adventure Holidays
The Adventure Company: 0845 450 5311; www.adventurecompany.co.uk

Judith Chalmers and husband Neil Durden-Smith take the ultimate drive on California's celebrated Highway One. It's a journey that's filled with history, style and stunning views as Judith discovers.

How often do you get to gaze at a white shark in Monterey, shop in Carmel, visit the Hearst Castle and admire the sunset from the same terrace where Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles had a bolt-hole?

Not only that we also got to meet former Mary Poppins co-star Dick Van Dyke, took a helicopter to lunch in Palm Springs, and all as part of our drive along the famous Californian Pacific Highway.

Thanks to a new Air New Zealand route, flying direct from San Francisco to Auckland, we decided to fly from London to LA and for the first time drive the Californian Pacific Highway from LA to San Francisco.

We began our Californian sojourn in La Jolla taking advantage of a chance to visit friends that we had met on a Lady Taverners Silversea Cruise to Alaska the previous summer. They live close to San Diego, one of the top five best places in America for eating and a really buzzy destination. La Jolla is a Spanish-influenced town meaning 'the jewel' and it's a most attractive place.  Its smartest hotel La Valencia is where world leaders, celebrities and those in the know stay, as they have been doing since it opened in 1926. It has traditional olde worlde charm in the best sense; we only had time for coffee on the terrace overlooking the blue Pacific yet the service was as if we had ordered caviar and lobster and we'll not forget the flowers on each table either, vivid orange and vibrant yellow ranunculi bunched tightly in short deep blue glass vases – beautiful!  From the hotel you also have good views of The Cove, a lovely walk, partly roped off when we were there for a colony of seals with their newborn pups slivering in and out of the water, and out to sea dozens of wetsuited surfers were riding the waves.

We were due to fly to the renowned Getty Museum in LA but this was cancelled due to poor visibility caused by sea mist. So instead we were helicoptered inland to lunch at a roadside diner in Palm Springs. That hadn't been on the itinerary!

Quad biking on Angel Mountain was also on the surprise schedule and one evening we had dinner at the Marine Room in La Jolla where we sat by two huge windows looking out to sea mesmerised by hundreds of screeching seagulls swirling and swooping in the moonlight and sandpipers running along the edge of the waves as they reached the shore searching for their dinner. It was hard to concentrate on our excellent food or the conversation.

After four days we set off up the coast towards San Francisco, initially driving in relentless traffic on freeways which in places had no less than eight lanes. Not for the faint-hearted. We left the freeway following the sign for the celebrated Highway One, a very exciting moment. Our first stop was the seaside town of Santa Monica with its long established pier and unpretentious small houses many originally owned by fishermen.  We stopped for lunch at Malibu which one of the guidebooks says 'is not a destination; it's a state of mind'. It's been the haunt of celebrities for decades and nowadays home for at least two of them – Tom Hanks and Barbra Streisand. Many of them spend time at Geoffrey's on the 27-mile long Malibu Beach – how often have we seen it on films and TV? And guess what – sitting at the next table was Dick Van Dyke!  He wanted to know about the West End productions of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins, both of which he had starred in. He was very friendly and joked when we had a photograph taken that "no one will recognise me with my grey hair". Wrong! Geoffrey's has a long mirror, which was next to our table so you can see exactly who is there without the embarrassment of turning round to stare – good for people spotting!

Our next port of call was Santa Barbara, a really attractive town between the Pacific and the Ynez Mountains. At the top end of the accommodation market is The Biltmore – which is renowned for its Sunday brunch, and is a superb example of Art Deco architecture. We stayed at the Harbor View Inn conveniently situated on the corner of Cabrillo Boulevard and State Street. Our room looked out on the palm fringed edge of the ocean and Stearns Wharf, a wide wooden pier where families fish at the weekends and people stroll or jog and perhaps make their own selection of multicoloured jelly beans in one of the few small shops. Walk the length of State Street and you see just how much this affluent town has to offer. Attractive stores, museums, art galleries, clubs, bars and restaurants, including the Enterprise Fish Company for those who love seafood. We were lucky to come across the James Joyce, a bar where monkey nuts are freely on offer from a beer barrel and where Dixieland Jazz is played every Saturday night. A clock in one corner was counting down to St. Patrick's Day – five days away! And, as with many a fine Irish pub anywhere in the world, the music set our feet tapping and our spirits soaring.

We could have spent longer in Santa Barbara. As well as its glorious shops and exciting restaurants it has fabulous blonde spanking clean sand and the whole place is very well laid out.  I hope I have the chance to go there again some day but we had great expectations of what we would find farther along the Pacific Highway. Some 220 miles and 41⁄2 hours later we came to Hearst Castle. It is an extraordinary phenomenon – the former home of press baron William Randolph Hearst who at one stage owned no less than one hundred media properties.  You can imagine how elaborate it is – Italian and Spanish inspired with marble, gothic church pews, fabulous gardens and two swimming pools, the largest decorated with stunning royal blue and gold tiles. The Neptune Pool outside has Palladian columns and a dome. Both are magnificent, worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster! Heads of state, literary and film stars of the time were regular guests.  David Niven, Bob Hope and George Bernard Shaw were just a few who stayed in lavish style. Anyone making world news would get an invitation including the first woman to swim the English Channel, Gertrude Ederle. Randolph Hearst did not like the Highway being built beneath his castle but we were happy for it to take us some sixty odd miles to what we found was another highlight – the exceptional Ventana Inn and Spa, very attractively built in wood in the mountains above the Pacific.  They serve wonderful fresh breakfasts and our suite had an open fire and an outside terrace with a bubbling hot tub from which we could see the green and gold covered hills of the Big Sur coast.  How romantic was that, night and day!!

Across the road we watched an incredible sunset from the terrace at Nepenthe, a bar/restaurant that has been there for over fifty years and sits on the top of a cliff with the ocean immediately below.  It used to be the hideaway for erstwhile lovers Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. The name in Greek means 'no sorrow' which I suppose is what it meant to them and certainly to us on a warm balmy evening. Another reason the Ventana Inn is such a great place to stay is that it is a skip and a jump away, actually three quarters of an hour's drive away, from the legendary towns of Carmel and Monterey.

Carmel, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor, is a charming treelined town full of straight streets, umpteen antique shops and boutiques and pretty restaurants.  In contrast we went to the Mission and its historic church founded in 1770, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for visitors from all over the world.  From Carmel beach we caught glimpses of the 17-Mile Drive at Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula.  The renowned drive, which only costs a few dollars per car, meanders through the Del Monte Forest with its Monterey pines and Cyprus trees and past the crashing surf on the coast. Various landmarks en route have memorable names such as Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay, Poppy Hills, the Restless Sea and Point Joe, all with outstanding views.  We sat on the terrace of The Lodge at Pebble Beach and, glasses in hand, watched the golfers playing the formidable 18th hole with the sea and rocks at their backs.  Sensational!

On to Monterey and its fascinating Aquarium, once the site of a cannery and Cannery Row itself, home of John Steinbeck's best selling novel based on the sardine industry of the 1930s and 40s.  The fishermen brought in 'the Silver Harvest', 250,000 tons of sardines each year all processed by immigrant workers.  Here we pressed our noses to the glass to watch the graceful movement of the only White Shark in captivity. Our journey ended at San Francisco, our gateway to New Zealand, after four unforgettable days on the magnificent Pacific Highway.

It’s rare in these media savvy days for a journalist to get to talk to anyone in the public eye without a minder, such as an agent, or PR manager – in some cases both and on rare occasions there’s even a bodyguard as well. Such extra company is not conducive to a one-on-one chat.

So it is always a great relief to ring the doorbell of Judith Chalmers’ comfortable, lived-in house in north London to find her multitasking and immediately putting the kettle on.

The hardest part of the interview is finding a time when Judy is at home – for anyone who might have thought that life was a little less frantic after Wish You Were Here? could not be more wrong. The pace at which Judy and her husband Neil Durden-Smith live is both admirable and frightening.

On a kitchen table is a magazine with a recent mother and daughter interview Judy and her daughter Emma had done. Judy exclaims that she looks pretty good in the photo – she does – “It must be the airbrushing,” she laughs. Many celebrities would whisk such a comment out of the transcript, but here is Judy’s appeal. What you see is what you get, and that is why after so many years on television, millions of viewers still want to see her. She is still associated with travel in the British public eye.

“I think people thought that when Wish You Were Here? finished I wasn’t on the screen so much. But I’m still very much around. I’ve been doing travel pieces for Breakfast News, I go on This Morning from time to time and I have been on the Des & Mel Show, Paul O’Grady Show and also Channel 4 where I often talk about changing holiday tendencies. It was all package holiday stuff when we started Wish You Were Here? and now independent travelling, the increase in cruising, flexibility of travel and the cheap air flights have changed all that. So these days I’m asked by many different programmes to talk generally about travel. It’s a large subject, so I swot up on the current situations before I do it. People still seem to think ‘travel’ and they think of me, which is very nice. Wish You Were Here? finished two years ago;  but we had a re-presented series transmitted last year. The stories were as before, but freshly linked in new packages.”

Judy has always been someone to embrace new challenges and she is thrilled to be involved in the new BBC2 series, Castle in the Country, presented by John Craven and Nicki Chapman. So far the series has been filmed at Chatsworth in the Peak District and Glamis in Scotland. The latest series, which Judy filmed last summer, is based at Castle Howard in Yorkshire.

“It’s the story of Castle Howard and its treasures which John and Nicki explore. For example, there is a segment on a furniture maker who always carved a small mouse on his pieces – and John has a go at carving a mouse himself! I do at least one report in each of the 25 programmes in the new series. I’m looking at people, places and things that are the best in Yorkshire. It is marvellous! I have largely worked for ITV since 1972 and so it is good to be back with the Beeb as well.”

Judy’s last year has been a busy one – no surprise there – filled with family, charity and of course travel. “The year began in Cape Town with the family – daughter Emma and her husband Gordon with their children Charlie 7, Sam 4 and William who then was only 6 months old and son Mark and his new wife Rachel.  It was just after Mark and Rachel’s wedding in Wales where Rachel’s parents had created a winter wonderland with some 150 snow-covered fir trees as part of the celebrations.  In Cape Town Neil had rented a house in Constantia outside the city.  Many of the houses there have pools, some have tennis courts but we were lucky to also have a trampoline set in concrete in the garden and a cricket net which provided great fun for all ages. “Sport played its part in January too, as it does in many months of our year I am glad to say.  Neil has played in the Robert Sangster Pro Am Golf Tournament in Barbados for more than 20 years.  Robert sadly died last year so this one was held in his memory.  The Tournament takes place on the Old Nine at the fabulous Sandy Lane Hotel and happily is to continue in the Sangster name.”

Work commitments at home took up most of February but by March Judy was on the road again – off to America (and you can read about that on P. XX).  Then it was on to New Zealand, a favourite destination for Judy and Neil. “We saw parts of the country I had not seen before in both the North and South Islands.  Air New Zealand has always flown there via Los Angeles but now has a route from San Francisco to Auckland.  We took advantage of this and travelled along the Pacific Highway from LA to San Francisco passing some of the most spectacular scenery in the world.  But once in New Zealand we travelled extensively in a 4x4 through stunning countryside and mountainous regions including the Coromandel Peninsula with some pretty hairy roads.  We stayed in some of the country’s luxury lodges in beautiful settings and had the pleasure too of staying with good friends along the way.  We visited wineries where many serve excellent food to go with their superb wines.  It was fantastic to drive from Christchurch all the way down to the bottom of the South Island including a visit to Stewart Island and finishing up at Bluff where the famous oysters come from.  We had Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc and three dozen oysters, which was a great way to end our holiday.”

Not all Judy’s travel has been long haul.  “I’ve had a few short hops too – to the Algarve in Portugal, to Ibiza for Nokia to launch a new mobile phone and to Edinburgh amongst them.

“I love Edinburgh; it is a great city, very cosmopolitan. I had dinner at The Dome which used to be the home of The Royal College of Surgeons of Scotland and then it was bought by The Royal Bank of Scotland. It has marbled pillars and beautiful stained glass windows.  Now it’s a very, very buzzy restaurant with a nightclub below it which is popular with students at the university.

“At home I enjoyed a quintessentially English day at the Hampton Court Flower Show beside the River Thames. People were fishing, they were out on boats, there were families sitting on the banks having picnics and it was a glorious day – hot and sunny.  A day like that is hard to beat anywhere in the world.

“We recently celebrated 30 years of Wish You Were Here?.  When we started the programme in 1973 travel was not considered to be very high in the programme pecking order and originally we went under the Adult Education banner.  After these 30 years the production team produced a video with some of the many highlights.  It was shown at the party for our anniversary which was kindly hosted by The Carlton Tower in London.  It was an amazing party with many old friends and colleagues from the travel industry – oh what a night!  The video was also shown at the ABTA Convention in Florida where I was asked to speak about my years on that wonderful programme and while I was in Florida I filmed for Sky travel.

“I opened new offices for The Department of Tourism in Doncaster where I also visited the controversially named Robin Hood Airport. I hosted an awards evening at The Space Centre in Leicester which was great fun amongst all the sputniks and rockets, travelled to Birmingham to the NEC to speak at the Destinations show which we also did at Olympia in London and I opened the first Saga travel shop in Leicester.  It’s a travel shop within a department store, which is totally accessible to the public for advice and the booking of holidays – a really good set up.

“On the charity side too it’s been a busy time.  I am very much involved with The Lord’s Taverners Charity which aims to give children with special needs more of a sporting chance in life.  The Lady Taverners, which was formed in 1987, is a fundraising arm of the charity and we were lucky enough to be involved with the launch of Cunard’s QM2 in Southampton.  We were given the chance by one of our Lady Taverners, Lynn Narraway, to hold the first ever charity event on board the QM2 the night after the Queen had launched the ship.  It raised £242,000 which was quite fantastic.   We also had the Ashes Walk, which covered 1,000 miles, starting from the Hampshire Rose Bowl during the England v Australia 20/20 International and finishing three weeks later at Lord’s Cricket Ground on the morning of the first Ashes Test Match. The Lord’s Taverners President, Mike Gatting, led the walk which stopped at 20 venues on route.  He was incredible and gave huge support to other walkers and the children with special needs who, in many places, came along as well.  On the last day we also had the Lords to Lord’s walk from the house of Lords to Lord’s Cricket Ground with banners and rosettes.“We are fortunate to have many celebrities who support the charity; Jasper Carrot, Tom O’Connor, Terry Wogan and Sir Jeremy Hanley were just four who entertained us at the Annual Luncheon of the Middlesex Region of The Lord’s Taverners.  The Lady Taverners’ President Rachel Heyhoe-Flint hosted a dinner in The Long Room at Lord’s with Terry Biddlecombe and his wife Henrietta Knight and in my annual Tribute Luncheon at The Dorchester we have acknowledged Dame Thora Hird, June Whitfield, Michael Parkinson, Jimmy Tarbuck, Sir John Mills, Chris Tarrant, Joan Collins and a couple of months ago, Dame Judi Dench.

“Another area where we raise money is on-board Silversea Cruises.  They give us a donation for everyone who books through the charity and over the years we have been through the Mediterranean a couple of times, we’ve sailed from Mumbai to Dubai and from Vancouver to San Francisco via Alaska.  The difference between The Lord’s and Lady Taverners charity and many other charities is that we are also a club and that club atmosphere is very much enjoyed on these cruises.  The money raised has now bought five of our buses which help to give children with disadvantages and disabilities the chance to have the freedom which they would otherwise not have.”

From cruise ships to comedy, Judy has branched out on her TV appearances filming with French & Saunders and has enormous fun with Paul O’Grady on his hugely successful chat show.  She has recently recorded five Through the Keyhole programmes with Sir David Frost.  Her fellow panellists were the athlete Roger Black and TV’s Flog It star, Paul Martin. On one Des & Mel Show she was surprised to receive a present at the end of the programme.  “They gave me a child’s pink wheelie suitcase in which I found a dress, a pair of trousers and a bra with the words ‘Here you are – you’re all ready for more of your travels!’.”

 Welcome to another At Home and Away with Judith Chalmers, the magazine that always reminds me of the lovely places I have been to this year!

One of the great joys of travelling for work is getting to meet so many people who love pointing out the best things about their country – they really are the true ambassadors.

Welcome to At Home and Away with Judith Chalmers – the definitive guide totravel.What I love so much about travelling the world, is that there are always more places to visit, more sights to amaze you and feed your mind.

No heart could fail to be moved by the trail of destruction caused by the tsunami that washed over Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and their islands. Instead of joy, the year 2005 began with an overwhelming sadness and helplessness at not being able to do more for the hundreds of thousands killed, barely surviving or those desperately seeking missing loved ones.

After a ten hour flight we arrived in Japan; my first visit to The Land of the Rising Sun! A fascinating cruise was the second part of the trip but our base initially as it most certainly HAS to be was the capital, Tokyo, home to more than twelve million people.