Like Istanbul, Rome and Jerusalem, the word “Athens” brings up a host of legendary associations: ruins of ancient civilizations; Mediterranean weather; and dirty, modern-day hustle and bustle. Having hit the previous three cities in previous and current travels, I wanted to see how things compared in the ancient and modern capital of Greece.

I was equally curious given recent events: while the global economic crisis had its Ground Zero in America, its shock waves took a while to ripple across the globe. They hadn’t yet quite reached Europe’s shores on my big 2008-2009 trip, but now, almost seven years on, they’ve been the focus of a fight between Europe’s big-dog nation, Germany, and its hapless debt-plagued counterpart, Greece. I’m not enough of an economics expert to know just what is going on, exactly, but the narrative is that years of Greek profligacy have led to the nation’s near insolvency – threatening their exit from the Eurozone and a crisis in the EU overall.

So on top of all that culture and archeology, I was curious to check out what times were like in the capital city of Europe’s economic bad boy.

Although I wasn’t able to take a ferry from Turkey to Santorini, taking one back to Athens proved eminently doable. Ferries in the Med have gotten a bad rap lately, what with the Norman Atlantic last year and the Costa Concordia in 2012 (though the latter was a cruise ship, not a ferry). So I did my homework: the ship that now plies the route between Santorini and Pireaus (the port of Athens) happens to be a recently launched, Korean-built vessel that had gotten stellar reviews.

I arrived at the ferry port in Santorini to find a much busier place than the off-season island would suggest. As the Blue Star Delos piloted itself into port, I waited with gaggles of foreign tourists and Greek locals before clambering aboard. As with the mammoth ships in Ireland and New Zealand that I’d taken in my past travels, this one had multiple garage decks for cars and trucks as well as space for passengers.

As I rode the escalators to the main deck, any worries about this being a sketchy conveyance evaporated: the ship was at least as nicely fitted out as the cruise ship I’d been on last spring. I even spluged an extra €50 for a private cabin – not strictly necessary as this wasn’t an overnight journey, but for an eight-hour sunset trip it made for a stellar sanctuary.

As the ship approached Piraeus, we were ushered into the cavernous garage decks to disembark; as we began to dock, ramps descended in a blaze of warning sirens like something like an invasion force or a sci-fi craft on an alien planet.

I had one final work day left in this trip, but beforehand again managed to engage in a morning recon of the city. Unlike sprawling Rome or Istanbul, Athens’ modern center is compactly organized around the hills of the Acropolis. I strode through Plaka, the tourist district nearest the historical monuments, and found a charming collection of narrow neoclassical streetscapes; the place looks recently fixed up, with the odd splash of quite creative graffiti here and there. Spotless, new trams rolled down larger thoroughfares.

As I headed northwest, toward Syntagma Square and the shopping district of Omonia, I saw a bit more grit – and the odd cluster of protestors. But it definitely felt safe, energetic, decidedly southern European in all the best ways. For a place in the grip of a massive economic depression, things seemed shockingly, refreshingly mundane.

Next morning at breakfast, my goal for the day presented itself from the top-floor terrace of my hotel: the city’s star attraction, the Acropolis.

Another similarity with Rome, Istanbul, and Jerusalem (and my current hometown, San Francisco): Athens is ringed by mountains. The Acropolis’s 500-foot outcrop has been a citadel for millenia, though it only took its current form in the Classical Greek era. As with many ancient monuments, it’s seen its share of damage and looting through the ages – from a gunpowder explosion in 1687 from when the Ottoman Turks used the place as a weapons depot, to British Lord Elgin making off with its frieze in 1811 – to this day the “Elgin Marbles” still reside in the British Museum in London.

I’ve mentioned before how ruins often leave me uninspired: a pile of rubble seems like so sorry a way to commemorate the architectural and engineering achievements of past civilizations. Likewise, the Acropolis is notorious for its huge crowds; at times I’m actually okay with that – as I wrote when I visited the Colosseum in Rome, places that were designed as gathering spots feel right with even today with large herds of visitors.

Well, I’d say the effect here was about halfway between the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel – where, when I visited, loud packs of tourists had to be repeatedly shushed by guards; the temples of the Acropolis were places of religious activity, and while I’m no big practitioner of such, I can appreciate the aura of serenity and contemplation they offer. Plus, for me, Greek deities have a double significance: I totally dug Greek mythology in my youth; also, for sci-fi nuts, their appropriation in the Battlestar Galactica franchise left me wondering if the Cylons were going to show up during my visit (thankfully, no).

Climbing the hill, past the Theatre of Dionysus and the Odeon of Herodes, I followed the crowds into the grand hilltop entrance – and beheld it in its partly ruined glory: the Parthenon.

Maybe it’s just fame and aura talking, but the place blew me away. The chattering tourists faded and I was able to focus on the grandeur of the temple. I was heartened to see that it and surrounding structures are the subject of significant restoration works; heck, if it was up to me I’d build the place back to the way it was in the time of Pericles, statue of Athena and all.

Afterward I strode down the opposite side, toward the neighborhood of Monastiraki: more fetching 19^th Century narrow streets lined with eateries and souvenir shops offering some rather creative T-shirts for sale.

Although older than Tel Aviv, Athens bears some similarity to its Israeli neighbor across the Med: it too is a revived city of relatively recent lineage. The place was under the thumb of the Ottomans for centuries, and relations with Turkey, though improving, remain prickly (item of note: there are no mosques to be seen anywhere in the surrounding cityscape). Only in the last couple of centuries has Athens regained some of its ancient-era stature, though even today it’s a significantly smaller place than Paris, London, or post-Ottoman Istanbul.

Still, it offers its own charms: the flea market, where I strolled before having lunch at a rather good café near the Temple of Hephaestus (how many eateries can make that boast?) echoed the back streets of Kadıköy in Istanbul; the graffiti here is at least as creative… even finding its way to the odd railcar on the city’s tidy Metro system. It too is a relatively new expansion of an old rail line from Piraeus, and is now roughly equivalent in size and ridership to the system in my native hometown, Montreal.

After dark, I opted to head off the tourist path a bit and walk around Makrigianni, the residential neighborhood southeast of the Acropolis. Here the Tel Aviv analogy was especially apt, with mid-rise apartment blocks fronting narrow streets… again presided over by the occasional cat. Plus, for €5 I managed to snag a tasty take-away meal that would have been triple the price in neighboring Plaka.

Having seen the city’s marquee attraction, I figured I should learn more about it: next morning I headed over to the new Acropolis Museum, a modern, somewhat severe-looking edifice lying just yards away from the base of the great outcropping. Underneath its glass and steel walls lie ruins of ancient Athens; in this regard, this city differs slightly from Jerusalem, Rome, or Delhi, all of which had been repeatedly sacked and rebuilt throughout history, always in a slightly different spot. Ancient Athens was always right here – surrounding the Acropolis itself.

But why? I wondered. Well, the answer lies with water: as with ancient settlements throughout the Mediterranean basin, Athens began in a secure spot with access to fresh water – which just so happens to be the Acropolis itself. Only later did the hilltop become a place of worship and communion with the Greek deities – and stayed that way right through the Roman period; unlike so many places of conquest and destruction, the later empire across the Aegean doggedly retained, and even enhanced, the Greek capital as a center of learning and culture. I guess that’s why they call it “Greco/Roman.”

I’ve never been one to spend days upon days in art and antiquities museums inspecting every detail of this or that artwork or artifact. So, evading the legions of bored schoolchildren being lectured by myriad docents, I sleuthed out one modestly-marked attraction on the map: the virtual reality theater. Cool. I was having visions of 3-D movie re-enactments of temples in ancient days. I strode across the building, past what looked like some kids’ play area, into the theatre, where a show was already in progress. No prob, I figured; I’d just wait for the next showing.

“What do you want!?” snarled a young, scruffy museum official who’d followed me out of the theatre. Whoa, dude. I asked him when the next show was taking place.

“There are no more showings today! Only at 11 and 12!” he barked. Glancing at the crowd, I noticed more schoolchildren – looks like this was designed as a kiddie attraction, probably to retain the attention of those inattentive youths I’d seen upstairs.

It was a minor incident at best, but something about it rattled me. The hostility, the rudeness… I can appreciate and accept that not all cultures interact identically; that Yankee-style friendliness isn’t the norm in other places; and that likewise, English is not the mother tongue in these parts. But still, I can’t help but wonder if this museum’s ambassadors to the world couldn’t have gotten at least a little briefing on globally-accepted manners.

I continued my wander of the city back past the Greek Parliament – and here, too, it was all business: a marching-band military processional of some kind. On side streets, I spotted the odd police paddy wagon and rifle-toting officers; didn’t seem like any protests were happening but looks like they weren’t taking any chances.

A stroll through the leafy National Gardens and up the hilly streets of the upscale Kolonaki neighborhood proved something of a tonic… until I came upon it: a poster on an apartment building across from the German Embassy. On it, a Swastika and a picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel dolled up in military garb.

Yikes.

Obviously, it’s ludicrious to make a connection between one random rude museum docent and the political ramifications of what I was seeing… but then I thought back to Israel and its oft-surly customer-service scenarios, and wondered if I’d been sensing the tip of a rather turbulent socio-political iceberg. This place looks and feels like a dynamic, lively southern European capital, to be sure… but there’s something unhappy lurking beneath the charming narrow streets and historic relics.

I continued my meander uphill, reaching the underground funicular that climbs the slope of Mount Lycabettus. A mixed crowd of locals and some visitors made it clear that this spot is on the radar, to be sure, but not to the degree as other attractions a short distance away.

Stepping out of the funicular clinched it: the hordes don’t know what they’re missing. The Acropolis gets the glory for its historic and archeological past… but Lycabettus, the highest point in the city, is a wonder, unfurling a glorious, mystical panorama of the city like nowhere else. Like Mount Carmel in Haifa, Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, or Twin Peaks back home in San Francisco (which is almost exactly the same height), this spot floats above the masses of the city’s apartment blocks. In the hazy distance I saw the sea and ships of Pireaus, where I’d made landfall just a few days ago.

This urban Mount Olympus is crowned by a small quintessentially Greek Orthodox chapel, and a modern-day amphitheatre to do its ancient counterparts on the Acropolis proud; the place has hosted numerous latter-day pop performances. An ethereal blend of succulents and flowering plants cover the slopes. I wandered down the meandering path back to Kolonaki, played the Imagine Dragons song “On Top of the World” on repeat, and felt the jarring scenes from earlier in the day simply melt away in my brain.

After dark I wandered the streets of Plaka one last time. The Acropolis was lit up, jewel-like, on the hilltop above. Although I often obey the “five block rule” about restaurants near tourist spots, I broke it this time… and was richly rewarded. I had a fabulous final meal in Athens, accompanied by warm, receptive service and a complimentary Limoncello as a digestif. And all within view of the Acropolis Museum where I’d encountered that surly docent… proving again that, in travel, as in life, there really are no absolutes.

My morning departure from Athens held one final treat: having ridden the speedy, reliable Metro in from the city, I stood in line at security behind a young Russian fellow traveling with his family – and their cat. He hauled kitty out of her crate and walked her through the X-ray – just as I’d done a number of times with my Khaleesi (though, alas, not this time).

Seems the cats of southern Europe and the Middle East, who’d been ever-present throughout this trip, were gently guiding me back home.

Santorini is one of those ludicrously photogenic places featured in innumerable travel magazines, feature films, and (I’m told) Greek fashion shoots and music videos. I therefore have been determined to include it on a jaunt around the Med, and this trip proved the opportune time.

I’d hoped to hop a ferry to get there, either from Istanbul itself (nope, too far – would have required a cruise) or from one of Turkey’s southern cities. Alas, a scour of travel websites yielded practically nothing until later in the season. So a plane ride it was, with a change in Athens, just as I’d done to get to Ko Phangan in Thailand from Cambodia back on my world trip.

Comparison with the Thai islands is apt: both they and the scatter-pattern of craggy dots in the Aegean Sea are big destinations for sun-seeking Brits and northern Europeans. Indeed, the brief flight to the island was packed… though the crowd onboard featured a surprising number of Americans as well as tourists from outside Europe. Interesting, I mused, though I didn’t think much of it at the time.

I arrived at my accommodations, one of those gorgeous cliffside cavelike structures hugging the top of the mountainside in Fira, Santorini’s main town. It was a cool, quiet evening, with shuttered shops lining back alleyways; in the distance, lights of other islands towns twinkled in the distance. As the sun rose the next morning, I saw it from my windows: a small peak jutting out of the Aegean waters, surrounded by the semicircular island. Santorini is in fact the caldera of a collapsed volcano that erupted some 3,500 years ago; it apparently led to the downfall of the Minoan civilization – and some say it’s the legend that inspired tales of the lost city of Atlantis.

Well, on a windy, cool March morning, Atlantis remained as quiet as the night before: most shops remained shut during the day, and only small scatterings of visitors were to be seen. Most of the folks out and about were locals – laborers busily repainting and remodeling in preparation for the summer season.

Then it hit me: Santorini’s off-season is really an off-season – more like, say, the Hamptons near New York than the beaches near San Diego. Points to consider: Europe’s freakishly high latitude, made possible by the warming effects of the Gulf Stream, means its climate is milder than it would otherwise be (to wit: Montreal and Marseille are almost at the same latitude). This at times misleads me to think of the Continent – at least its Mediterranean bits – as mirroring California’s coast. However… not all Mediterranean climes are created equal: whereas, say, Santa Monica can count on daytime highs between 65°F and 75°F practically year-round, that’s not as true of locales in the actual Med, a much smaller body of water than the mammoth Pacific. Here, seasonal swings are greater, even right by the sea.

So that explained the missing Brits, and general emptiness of the place overall. Santorini in mid-March is chilly. Its famed winds made it feel even colder than Istanbul. I’m told the converse is true here in summer, where it can reach 40 °C (over 100 °F) – almost unheard of along the American West Coast but no doubt a godsend to sun-starved north Europeans.

Nonetheless, I opted to brave the elements, renting a motor scooter to do some exploring. Riding south, I took curving mountain roads down to the island’s ferry port. Aside from a small freight vessel, the place was likewise deserted… and that’s when my scooter chose to die.

Crap, I thought. Fumbling around in my pockets, I located the receipt from the rental place and gave them a ring; a few tries with the manual kickstarter thankfully did the trick, and I was on my way. Another reminder this was the off-season: the thing looked like they’d just hauled it out of storage (though it behaved quite nicely the rest of the day, thank heavens).

Braving blasts of wind that would do Chicago proud, I headed north to the island’s tip. While the inner rim of the island hugging the caldera is mountainous, the outer parts are verdant plains: I looked over beautifully terraced farms leading out to blue seas. In the distance, some of the other islands of the Cyclades chain were visible; it was easy to see how humans of early history settled these islands one by one, forming one of humankind’s first civilizations.

Meanwhile, my destination lay perched in the distance: the town of Oia (pronounced “EE-ya”), another clifftop settlement, this one blanketing the island’s northwesternmost point. Fira is pretty, to be sure, but Oia is the place dreams are made of: a dense thicket of whitewashed buildings tumbling down the cliffs toward the azure sea. Here and there, blue-domed churches added vivid splashes of color. Here the peace and quiet of the off-season was a blessing: the town was magical, bewitching, everything those travel brochures advertised and then some. Like a number of other spots on this journey, Oia has catapulted to what is now an increasingly crowded roster of my Most Beautiful Spots On Earth.

But surely, I wondered, a place like this didn’t just spring, fully-formed, as a photogenic tourist destination. Actually, its history has a thing or two in common with Valparaíso, Chile, a city I’d visited almost exactly six years ago which also sports a Mediterranean climate and structures climbing steep hillsides. Both were good-sized 19^th century port towns – in Oia’s case, as a stopover point on the trade route between Russia and Egypt. Most of the fine structures – now repurposed as hotels, shops, and restaurants – were once the homes of mariners. Alas, as with Valparaíso and the opening of the Panama Canal, the arrival of steam and the growth of Athens’ port of Pireaus hastened Oia’s decline; it was only in the last few decades that the place rebirthed itself as a holiday destination.

Over the next couple of days, I joined my local counterparts, and rolled up my sleeves to do more remote work; ironically, being in a vacation spot during a quieter time made for a perfect productivity enhancer – to say nothing of having a killer view of the blue Aegean. The weather improved some on my last day on the island, so I opted to hit a couple more spots before I was set to head off.

Although the new ferry port is some ways away from Fira town, the old port, where some boats still alight for caldera tours, lay just down the hill from where I was staying. I walked down the winding paths, dodging the odd pile of manure and paying my greetings to the beasts responsible for them. Yes, mules, donkeys, and horses are still used on the island to haul sacks of goods up from the old harbor. Meanwhile, anchored in the harbor, a filmic reminder: one boat named “Melina,” same as the Bond girl in the set-partly-in-Greece film For Your Eyes Only.

Reaching the bottom, I opted for a higher-tech conveyance to climb back up: the Santorini Cable Car – really more a chain of ski-lift-type gondolas – was said to run only a few times a day in the off-season… but luckily one of those times was mere minutes from when I stopped in. The elderly lift operator ushered me and a family from Vancouver into a cabin, and up we went for the brief journey up the mountain.

From there I hoofed it over to the town’s Prehistory Museum. Well, sort-of prehistory, as it mostly featured artifacts from the island’s Minoan-era past… but the effect was nonetheless spectacular: astonishingly vivid, beautiful ceramics and frescoes from Akrotiri, the island’s onetime center circa, oh, four thousand years ago. Archeological work here in past decades has corroborated that the island’s volcanic eruption was indeed what toppled the Minoan civilization… though no confirmation on whether this was in fact Atlantis. A part of me chooses to believe it was: a place this stunning would have made a perfect spot for a lost civilization to set up shop… only to ultimately, mysteriously disappear beneath the waves and winds.

I used to hate it that my birthday fell in the middle of March: it’s not really winter, it’s not really spring, and everybody’s in the middle of everything. Heck, I was even born midweek, on a Thursday (same day it fell this year). Perhaps that’s why, beginning with my big world trip, I’ve been away on this date more often than I’ve been at home.

Appropriately enough, this year I spent it in the middle of the largest city in Europe, a place that bridges Europe and the West with Asia and the East.

If you think about it, the notion of “Europe” and “Asia” are in a sense imaginary: unlike, say, Australia or the Americas – landmasses physically separated by leagues of open ocean from their neighbors – the Eurasian landmass is one solid, relatively navigable chunk of terrain (just ask Marco Polo). Europe is really just Asia’s west coast. It is we humans who have given the regions their distinctiveness – and it’s inescapable, when traveling from, say, Vienna to Amman, as I did in my past travels, to notice that you’re crossing over from one place to another very different place – even though the physical distance is about the same as from San Francisco to Chicago.

So where does the transition happen? Well, Istanbul is one of a few spots where you can kind of feel the shift take place right under your feet.

Start with climate and geography: sprawling across the narrow Bosphorus strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara (an inlet of the Aegean, itself an inlet of the Med), the city sports microclimates that rival California’s. Continue with history and politics: once it was Byzantium, an ancient Greek settlement; then it became Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire; then, as of the 1400s, it became Istanbul, an Ottoman Muslim imperial center and, ultimately, capital of a modern nation-state.

Given this mishmash of cultures and locales, I wasn’t sure what to expect: I’d heard rave reviews about the place from numerous visitors and expats… but was also aware of some growing hostility in Islamic Turkey toward the West. Having traveled a fair bit on both sides of the two worlds this city bridges, I wondered: would it be another Cairo or another London?

Arrival, fortunately, was as smooth and efficient as in the latter: for only the second time in all my years of travel, my luggage arrived first off the conveyor. Following the signs to the Metro, I handily purchased a fare card and boarded the train bound for the city. Transferring to the light-rail was equally a cinch. The trains were crowded, as I’d been warned, but nothing out of the ordinary for an urbanite such as myself. Alighting at historic Sultanahmet, I saw the domes and minarets of the Blue Mosque gloriously lit up in the chilly night. I wandered down tidy, narrow streets to my accommodations, an adorable boutique inn with congenial staff, a large room… and a price tag easily a third less than anything I’d paid back in Israel.

I was set to work remotely for the following two days, but that didn’t stop me from engaging in a little bit of reconnoitering: I walked through the old city to Istanbul’s star attraction, the Hagia Sophia. This massive religious structure dates back to the 6^th century, a time when most of the West was in the maw of the Dark Ages following the collapse of the old Roman Empire. Its long, multifaceted heritage has seen it serve as cathedral (the largest in Europe for a thousand years), then mosque (after the Ottomans took it over), and now a museum. Predictably crowded with tourists, it was nonetheless a mammoth, bewitching old place perfect for a moody morning in the city.

Meanwhile, I felt like I was being followed in my travels: Like Israel, Istanbul is also thick with street cats. I’m told they’re more respected here than back in the Holy Land. They’re all over city gardens and monuments; one even elected to preside over the crowds inside the Hagia Sophia itself, no doubt assuming that it was the subject of worship and adulation.

Next morning, I hopped the light rail across the bridge over the Golden Horn to the “new” city – Beyoğlu district. Truth be told, the “old” city area of Sultanahmet took me a bit by (pleasant) surprise: instead of a filthy warren of narrow street as in Islamic Cairo or Old Delhi, the ancient part of this town is tidy, upscale, and (of course) rather touristy – periodically overfriendly touts reminded me that this place is as much Asia as it is Europe. Crossing the bridge intoBeyoğlu, however, was more the Istanbul I expected: narrow, hilly streets crowded with shops and apartments. A mix of tourists and locals were out and about as I strolled down pedestrianized İstiklal Avenue, past the clanging historic tram to the broad plaza of Taksim Square. I passed Galata Tower on the way – a bona fide medieval edifice literally towering over the city’s 19^th century downtown – but didn’t make it to the top due to a crowd of noisy schoolchildren. Istanbul, in this regard more like a developing world city than a European one, has grown immensely in recent decades; it’s likewise become one of the world’s top tourist destinations, and in spite of European-style infrastructure improvements, the place nonethless groans with capacity.

While the rest of my day was spent working, my hotel decided on a birthday surprise: they knocked on my door that evening, and presented me with a darling present of chocolate fondue with bananas – how, in a land of desserts I’m not terribly fond of they managed to figure out my absolute favorite treat in the whole wide world I’ll never know… but my already positive impression of the place went up a couple dozen notches.

With work complete,the next morning, a bit of Bond: that scene in From Russia With Love, where 007 and his local fixer take a boat under the city to get to the Russian Consulate is in fact the Basilica Cistern (and nowhere near the real-life Consulate, but heck, it made for a great scene). Largest of many scattered through this ancient city (this one claims a pedigree going back to the 6^th century and Emperor Justinian I), nowadays it’s all touristed up, replete with fish swimming in its waters and a café at the edge of its murky depths. Still, the setting is sufficiently spooky and Bond-ish… if you can forget about the (real-life) Russians hungrily snapping photos of those Medusa columns.

From there, I strolled through pedestrian shopping streets, to the granddaddy mercantile palace of them all: the Grand Bazaar.

I may not be big on shopping, but this attraction – ranked among the city’s, and indeed the world’s, biggest draws – has been a must-see for me for some time. It’s a sublime place indeed, an early Ottoman take on the mega-mall dating back more than five centuries. Happily, unlike some such places in the Middle East, shopkeepers are content to leave you alone while browsing their wares. I guess Istanbul tilts more European on that score – though I did see some haggling between the odd hijab-clad lady and proprietors of the shops.

I wanted to hop on a tram to see more sights… but emerged from the bazaar to find the tram’s passage blocked by protest marchers. It all looked peaceful, though I did spot clusters of police officers in riot gear on some side streets; apparently it was all commemorating some police brutality a year back. Nothing serious came of it… but it was a reminder that Ferguson, Missouri isn’t alone on the world stage.

Finally reaching Kabataş on the other side of the Golden Horn, I headed to another of the city’s star attractions. Apparently, by the 19^th century the Ottoman Sultans had grown tired of their old digs in Sultanahmet, and commissioned another, grander place to be built to compete with the ornate insanities of Europe. Dolmabahçe Palace was the result, a compound on the banks of the Bosphorus so grand and ornate it apparently contributed to the Empire’s insolvency and its reputation as the “sick man of Europe.”

Well, I could see why: a short guided tour walked us up staircases with crystal-hewn balustrades; gold-leafed imperial reception chambers; and – just as I was wondering what they blew the Imperial treasury on – a mind-blowing, enormous Grand Ceremonial Hall to rival anything I’d seen in Paris or Saint Petersburg. Perhaps, though, the fate of the reigning monarchs of those last two fiefdoms should have given the Ottomans pause.

Strolling the gardens of Dolmabahçe and communing with its cats, I couldn’t help but gaze upon the famed waterway on which it sits and think: I need to cross it. It’s not every day one can cross from one continent to another in mere minutes. Fortunately, the Kabataş ferry terminal was just a short walk away, and ships to the Asian side’s popular Kadıköy district departed every half hour. Together with a mix of locals and other visitors, I boarded the tidy ferryboat and traversed the legendary waters. It was a splendid, cool, sunny springtime day as we passed some industrial bits of harbor and arrived on the other side.

Kadıköy was fantastic – every bit as busy and bustling as shopping districts on the other side, but significantly less touristy. Yet another warren of pedestrian streets revealed a busy fish market, some garment shops lining a narrow alleyway, and gaggles of pubs and eateries. The waterfront offered mystical, hazy views of the mosques and minarets of Sultanahmet, just across the water. Consider this another air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame, in Emma Lazarus parlance.

It was after dark by the time I finished my reconnoiter (and a bite of dinner), so I opted for a speedier way to cross the Bosphorus: Istanbul is in the midst of expanding its modern but hopelessly overcrowded subway system, which includes a new tunnel under the water that’s part of the Marmaray rail line. The gleaming conveyance took me back to Europe in less time than it takes BART to traverse San Francisco Bay.

My last full day in Istanbul saw moodier weather than the rest, so I stuck closer to home and visited some spots I’d missed in previous days. Having seen the majesty of Dolmabahçe I figured I owed its predecessor a nod: I hoofed it over to Topkapi Palace, the older Ottoman-era residence commanding the tip of the Sultanahmet peninsula at Seraglio Point. Predictably, this place is a more eastern-styled affair, with arched courtyards and intricate tilework – and bigger crowds, given its proximity to other Istanbul landmarks.

A walk through the palace’s former gardens led me to an utterly appropriate spot to spend Pi Day: the Museum of the History of Science & Technology in Islam. A short film at the start of the exhibits explains – a bit defensively, I noted – how the oft-overlooked work of Islamic scholars preserved and expanded upon scientific knowledge through the Middle Ages. In addition to carrying forward the work of the ancient Greeks, Islamic scientists expanded on areas of mathematics, as witnessed in the Arabic terms algebra and algorithm. Models and recreations of everything from water clocks to oversized astronomical instruments (the originals of which I saw in Jaipur, India) proved that cultures the world over can readily adopt the language of science if so inclined.

Wandering back from dinner through the streets of Sultanahmet on my last night in the city confirmed it: yes, this metropolis straddling two continents and cultures makes for an excellent place for a global nomad, born between two seasons of the year, to spend a birthday at work and at play… to say nothing of the enjoyment garnered by those glorious Turkish cats.

Pint-sized Israel – a country about the size of New Jersey – packs in a lot of geographic punch. I was determined this go-round to see more of what had eluded me on previous travels. With my rental car at last secured, I headed northward on Israel’s spotless, gleaming Highway 6. As the country’s easternmost north-south thoroughfare, it bore reminders of the nation’s agonies: hillside towns with minareted mosques popped up here and again… only to be foregrounded by the nation’s security barrier; signage at off-ramps indicated routes to Israeli settlements.

As I drove, the landscape grew hilly yet more verdant than the rocky mountainscapes down south. Passing slopes covered in white-stone apartment blocks, I followed my GPS’s directions and arrived at my accommodations on the slopes of Haifa’s Mount Carmel just as the sun was setting over Haifa Bay.

I’ve long been captivated by Haifa, in the abstract at least, for a topographic feature it shares with Hong Kong: both urban centers sit astride the slopes of mountains. Alas, it became clear when I arrived that both cities share something else: aside from their stellar geography, neither offers much to write home about aesthetically. In Haifa’s case, curvy mountain roads are fronted by dirty, forgettable apartment blocks. Oh, sure, there’s the odd gem – my hotel, located in an elegant former mansion, was one; the road at the foot of the mountain bearing old stone edifices of the city’s German Colony (where I had a nice dinner of schnitzel, natch) is another. And, of course, the sea and sky and – on the night I was there – a glorious full moon overlooking twinkling Haifa Bay. Echoes of Valparaíso, Chile, or my current hometown of San Francisco, came to mind as I wandered up and down gritty streets amid pleasant breezes.

Haifa’s main attraction was my first destination the next morning: the Bahá’í World Centre, a sprawling campus of gorgeous, immaculately-manicured gardens and buildings climbing Mount Carmel above the German Colony. The Bahá’í are an interesting lot, a blend of proto-hippie pacifism and traditional theism that originated in Persia in the 19^th century. Their holy sites are positively magnificent the world over, from Wilmette, Illinois; to New Delhi, India; to here, in the land where so many religions claim as their home. I may not be one for spirituality or faith, but I sure can appreciate tranquility and great architecture.

From there, I piloted my little Chevy Spark northward, to coastal Israel’s topmost point, and the site of one of my earliest travel memories: the grottoes of Rosh HaNikra.

This spot stands out in my mind for two reasons: one, the astounding, glorious interplay of sea and rock, as the waters of the Mediterranean pound against the grottoes of the chalk cliffs; two, for the cable car – I had a bit of a childhood fixation on them – that’s apparently the steepest in the world. Together with gaggles of mostly Israeli tourists and their families (the place remains an attraction for all ages), I descended to the base of the cliffs. Both the cableway and the grottoes were smaller than I remembered, but the effect was no less enchanting.

Equally haunting, and a bit sad, are the old railway tunnels dug by the British during Palestine’s Mandatory Period. Given the strategic vulnerability of tunnels from the north, toward Lebanon just on the other side of the rock, portions of these were blown up during Israel’s War of Independence in 1947-48. A quick swipe up from Google Maps revealed it: I was mere yards from Lebanon, and barely eighty or so miles from Beirut. Perhaps one day, in a different geopolitical climate, these tunnels will be reopened, and we travelers will again be able to ride the rails north up this glorious coast.

After lunch and a seaside stroll in nearby Nahariya – a town whose proximity to Lebanon has rendered it susceptible to periodic shelling – I drove east, into the hills of the Galilee. The landscape was at once familiar – blink and it could be California’s Central Coast – and different – periodic Israeli and Palestinian towns offered up more minarets and red-tile roofs. As I crested one hill and began my descent, I saw a surprising road sign: “Sea Level.” I was almost to the Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee, and my destination for that evening.

The Dead Sea gets all the glory for being the lowest spot on Earth, but it’s not the only place around here to bear the below-sea-level distinction. Starting around the Kinnereth and continuing south, this terrestrial depression is known as the Jordan Rift Valley. Depending on how you measure it, this geographic formation continues for thousands of miles into Africa toward the birthplace of humankind.

For me, however, the attachment held more recent origins: I checked in at the Galei Kinnereth Hotel, an old warhorse of a resort going back to the 1940s. Humbler and more faded than some newer resorts nearby, the place nonetheless holds a rich history: a small gallery on its second floor revealed images of Danny Kaye, Golda Meir, and David Ben-Gurion as past visitors.

While dining at a lakefront eatery on some St. Peter’s Fish (a local variety of tilapia caught from the lake), a visitor to my table brought back memories of the present: a cat, one of Israel’s many that I’ve seen in my time here, watched me eat with those big, mournful eyes. Oh, I probably shouldn’t have, but I tossed the creature a bit of my meal, which she promptly scampered off to scarf down before returning to seek out another gullible tourist.

I headed back southward the next day, but before returning my rental car I made one final stop: driving through Savyon, a leafy neighborhood of low-slung homes, I reached it: a rambling ranch-style place where we lived during the three years in this land when I was a boy. A memory burbled up of loading up our Volvo station wagon for yet another adventure… and it was then that I realized what this weekend of driving was all about. It was here, in this diverse, Mediterranean land, that my passion for travel was ignited. These mountains, these lakes and beaches and cliffs and seas, all fired up my boyhood imagination, led me to inhabit a continent, and eventually explore the world. All great journeys have their beginnings, and for me, this was the place where wanderlust was born.

My finale in this land mirrored its opener on my previous trip: a sojourn in the country’s biggest city, Tel Aviv. I reunited with my Mom and Arthur for a dinner with my aunt and uncle, the parents of the newlywed groom who all live in the farming community down south. They’ve had a rough few years since my big world travels, including a traumatic falling-out with a religious community and nonprofit foundation they were involved in. But all that’s behind them now, and they seem happier than I’ve ever known them. Part of it might be their response to the interminable political turmoil of this little nation. As my aunt Ella put it:

“We don’t watch the news anymore. It’s too depressing!”

Probably for the best.

I didn’t quite make it to Old Jaffa, the ancient port city adjacent to modern Tel Aviv, on my last outing, so this trip gave me an opportunity to fill that in, too. But this time, I got to see it through the eyes of a former native: my Mom.

“It was a total slum until they fixed it up in the sixties,” she said as we strolled through spotless medieval stone alleyways that echoed my visit to Mdina in Malta last year. Unlike flat Tel Aviv, Jaffa sits on a small promontory that made it a prime location for a harbor. It was a warm, hazy spring day, and a set of rocks just offshore foamed up the blue seas: they’re said to be the legendary spot where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus in Greek myths (I was a bit obsessed with the original Clash of the Titans when I was a boy).

A lunch and a dinner and a few meetups with more relatives rounded out our time in Tel Aviv. Between both sides of my family it’s truly dazzling how many relations I have in this country – more than almost anywhere else on Earth. Strolling southward down the waterfront from the Port of Tel Aviv with two of my cousins the night before I left, I concluded that, yes, if I ever were to make this country my home, bustling, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv would be the place. For me, though, the country holds a sacredness that goes beyond cities or lifestyles or work or religion itself.

It’s the place where I learned to love travel.

Travel, I always say, has many mothers. My big world voyage was planned in the wake of a failed relationship; my sojourns to London & Paris last spring kicked off my nephews’ and nieces’ intro to world travel; another trip last spring, to Malta, originated in my boyfriend Mathew’s desire to meet up with his friend teaching English in Cairo somewhere in the Mediterranean.

I’d long plotted a return to Israel, one of my past homelands, and where much of my (actual) mother’s extended family still resides. Opportunity came knocking this year, when the last of my cousins over there announced wedding plans, and some work transition afforded a window. And so it began again, with a smooth liftoff from San Francisco and an overnighter across North America and the North Atlantic.

As in my big world journey, I opted to stay over in London with a member of my multi-generational family friend clan who once aided and abetted my parents’ first meetup. Good choice: on arrival, the true master – er, mistress – of the abode presented herself to me: Pushkin, the family’s black cat, a near doppelganger for my furball back home. This elegant creature just may have snatched the Cat For Dog People award from my “Khaleesi”: sweet, loving, eager to have her belly rubbed (a rarity among cats).

Next morning, back in the saddle: a remarkably speedy commuter train whisked me to Luton Airport, now my fourth London-area airfield. A surprisingly intimate place, basically a big airplane (ahem, “aeroplane”) barn well north of London proper. Together with oodles of Orthodox Jews, I boarded an easyJet Airbus A320 for the hop across Europe and the Mediterranean to the Levant. It still amazes me how the Southwest Airlines model has so thoroughly taken root across the globe: EasyJet’s no-frills service offered up decent for-pay food and drink, and slim yet comfortable Recaro seats.

As in so many spots around the world, Israel has its own form of SuperShuttle-esque shared taxis, known locally as the sherut. Since my first destination in this little country was in Jerusalem, some 40 miles away, I parked myself in one, and soon after we were off. Signs of a nation on the move were once more apparent, as they had been for me back in 2008: new highways being built together with a high-speed rail link between the country’s two biggest cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; a soaring Santiago Calatrava viaduct carrying Jerusalem’s new light-rail network. And some other, less desirable artifacts of a nation founded by tough-minded immigrants: from the rude driver of the sherut to an angry fat man at the airport who demanded directions from me. I was reminded how much I appreciate American-style congeniality, even when it’s a bit fake.

Meanwhile, congeniality galore was on tap at my Uncle Sammy’s place, where I gobbled up the last bits of a stellar Israeli meal (tomato/cucumber salad; tahini; pita bread), caught up with him and the rest of the family, and beheld a highlight of this particular Promised Land outing: the simultaneous visit by my mother, the first time we’ve both been in this place since I was seven. After a night’s sleep, we spent a pleasant few hours strolling around the central part of Jerusalem, shopping, enjoying stellar fruit drinks and iced coffee, and hearing my mother’s reminiscences of the place from decades ago. Afterward, I ambled back to our accommodations, passing the Montefiore windmill — part of the first settlement outside Jerusalem’s walls in the 19^th century — and the old railway station, an Ottoman-era stone structure now repurposed as a shopping/dining hub. The old train tracks have likewise been made into a rail trail, not unlike Missouri’s Katy Trail or New York’s High Line.

Annd… that was it with sightseeing for me: since I’d found a new job so soon after I’d made plans for this trip, we agreed that I would work part of the time remotely. In the years since my big world travels this has become an increasingly common trend. Over the next two days I was able to get a lot done – all the while corresponding with co-workers via e-mail, online, chat and videoconference. It remains to be seen whether this will further solidify a trend that’ll make world travel ever more accessible for busy working professionals… but I, for one, am all for it.

The following evening, a taste of old Jerusalem: my uncle drove us across town to Mahane Yehuda, the old market, for a traditional (and delicious) meal of skewers, hummus, highly-addictive pita bread, and a range of marinated vegetables. Here, too, old and new collide: this traditional market has “gone hipster,” as my uncle and cousin Adar indicated: when the produce shops close, a range of eateries, bars and cafés stay open late into the night.

We wandered back through Beit Ya’akov, one of West Jerusalem’s oldest neighborhoods outside the the walls of the Old City. Men in religious garb strolled through narrow alleyways flanked by stone houses. A stealthy yet surprisingly social army of stray cats eyed us curiously; the African wildcat, from which most modern strains of domestic cat originate, is indigenous to this region. While Israelis profess to be indifferent to them (“we are a dog country,” said my uncle), they’re often fed by locals, and generally seem content to live as their forebears have for eons in these parts.

The next morning I met my cousin Adar, a newly-minted occupational therapist with a gift for languages and an interesting, broad perspective on this country. Sitting over a couple of iced coffees – a misnomer; the drink is rich and creamy like a Frappuccino, though even comparing it to that doesn’t do it justice – I learned more about the region’s troubles, from the never-ending geopolitical conflict to the high cost of living and income inequality – yes, that’s a problem in high-tech Israel just as it is back home.

And yet… people still manage to find time to celebrate. This was the week of Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Hebrews’ salvation (yet again) in ancient Persia. The holiday was always something of a Jewish Halloween, with costumes, merriment, and substantial boozing for a normally not-too-terribly-tipply people. In recent years, it’s become bigger still: even in buttoned-down Jerusalem, gaily-decorated youths roamed the streets while festive music blared out from street fairs and shops. Fittingly, my cousin Binyamin, whose wedding I’d come to attend, scheduled the event with his bride Zohar at an elegant hilltop wedding hall about an hour southwest of Jerusalem – and added a “wear a costume” theme.

A marriage of two farming-community thirtysomethings probably sounds like a snoozefest – but here too, this nation surprises: for one thing, Israeli weddings are gargantuan; this one was considered smaller… at merely three hundred or so people. The ceremony itself – brief, as Jewish weddings typically are – was punctuated by whoops and hollers from the colorfully-attired crowd. Afterward, we piled into the cavernous, glass-walled hall for a delectable Mediterranean dinner and dancing to a blend of contemporary dance tunes of both local and American provenance.

“Where’s the hora?” asked Arthur, my Mom’s new beau and lifelong Canadian. Alas, traditional Jewish folk dances are about as commonplace in Israel nowadays as the Charleston is at North American weddings. Avicii and Katy Perry are preferred. I ended up chatting with my various cousins, some of whom are still completing the country’s mandatory military service. It’s always a bit eerie, coming here and seeing this doppelgänger existence of my kin that could very well have been my own: my family lived here for three years when I was a lad, and I always wonder how I would have turned out in this land of great joys colliding with such tremendous sorrows.

As I’d discovered on arrival, if there’s one place where those two forces oddly, maddeningly connect, it’s this country’s periodic lapses in customer service. The “Israelis are rude” cliché seemed to me in my last voyage to have been largely vanquished – but the one area where it stubbornly held on was in my car rental experience. In fairness, Israel’s not alone: I find the entire affair of short-term car hire to be maddeningly inefficient, annoying, and slow the world over. It’s become my least favorite part of travel, trouncing even flight delays and lost luggage.

I’d booked a car in Jerusalem for the early afternoon for a journey to Israel’s north. Most of the major international agencies are well represented here; the plan was to take my Mom and Arthur (who was celebrating a milestone birthday) to lunch next door, then pick up the vehicle and head off.

Alas, the best-laid plans. I received an e-mail at 12:06pm: “We’re open until 12:30. Please don’t come after that.” A confirmation call from one of my Hebrew-speaking cousins confirmed it: my reservation would not be honored for the (later) hour it had been booked. We raced over there – I in the process stupidly forgetting my passport. A surly, bored-looking young woman greeted us and echoed what she’d said in her communiques; another agency next door was open for an additional half hour – but even though we retrieved my passport and made it back with a minute to spare, no dice:

“The garage closes at one. We have no control over it!” barked the young man behind the counter.

And so we hatched alternate plans: I grabbed a rather pricey taxi back to the airport and rented a vehicle from there. One bright spot: the airport rental counter, where I’d just booked the reservation online, was speedy and efficient. Plus, when the car rolled out at the pick-up spot in the airport garage, it was a brand-new, cute little Chevy Spark with manual transmission. Perfect. Others may scoff at such pint-sized little crates, but I love them. Heck, my vehicle back home is a scooter.

The ride down to Jerusalem to Ben-Gurion Airport proved worthwhile on an another level: to avoid the crazy traffic on Highway 1, the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem thoroughfare, my driver took us down Route 443. Passing West Bank Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements, I saw it up-close and personal: the separation barrier, Israel’s Berlin Wall. Miles of concrete and barbed wire, dotted by guard towers. Periodic signs on roads leading away from the highway warned “Palestinian Village not safe for Israeli Citizens.” Suffice it to say, consternation about car-rental hassles dissipated. Living on a hair-trigger like this, I suppose, partly accounts for why some niceties go out the window. Meanwhile, finally equipped with a vehicle of my own, I headed off for the next phase of my Levantine adventure.

Sitting on a Hawaiian Airlines jet looking out at the azure Pacific. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”– which first caught my attention further across the Pacific, in Sydney, Australia on my big world trip –plays on my headphones. My at-long-last first-ever journey to the Hawaiian islands, a holiday gift from my partner Mathew, is winding to a close.

Hawaiian tropes run redolent through modern American culture, finding their fullest expression in the Hawaiian Renaissance of my youth, and continuing to today: consider Wikipedia, Akamai, luau, lanai, and countless other bits of Hawaiian terminology that have made their way into the vernacular. I’ve long been curious to check out these islands plopped in the middle of the Pacific… though also held that bit of trepidation as to what mass tourism might have done to these otherwise-isolated locales.

Stephen Colbert’s jokes about Hawaii not being part of America holds one immediately-apparent benefit: with the island chain almost as distant from California as is the East Coast, flights to Hawaii are a serious affair: our Hawaiian Airlines widebody service had the feel of an international flight. Mathew further bumped it up, springing for a lei greeting on landing. I’d always thought of these floral necklaces as tacky plastic affairs, but ours were gorgeously done-up strands of fragrant flowers that stayed fresh throughout our visit.

Since this was my “starter” trip to the islands, Mathew opted to bring me to O’ahu and stay in Waikiki. Once a verdant marshland and longboard surf spot of Hawaiian royalty, Waikiki is now a bit of a Miami Beach on the Pacific – dense, crowded, filled with high-rise hotels. One interesting wrinkle: with the influx of Asian tourists, Waikiki is positively crawling with noodle joints, sushi shops, and Korean barbecue spots reminiscent of my Asian travels of years past. One of these little spots made for a tasty lunch while we waited for our hotel room to be ready.

As this was a holiday gift, Mathew sought out upgraded experiences throughout. He’d booked us into a luxurious condo-hotel, Aqua Skyline at Island Colony, that claimed to be the tallest accommodations in the area. Not advertised was its 1970s-era structure that had been only minimally upgraded, accompanied by indifferent, apartment-house levels of service. The forty-plus story building is serviced by four elevators that were crammed, crowded, and frequently out of service during our stay; while the room did indeed offer a stellar view of town, it also featured spottily-cleaned facilities, rundown corridors, and other artifacts of mediocre accommodations. Heck, we’d both been in better-run youth hostels and budget chain motels. After much frustration with intransigent staffers, Mathew finally was able to voice his complaints to a manager who tried to make good… but overall I was reminded that, even in spots with robust tourist infrastructure, patches of weakness can and do exist.

Fortunately, the next day’s excursion more than made up for it: part of Mathew’s motivation for taking me to O’ahu was for its highly popular – if less high-profile than, say, Pearl Harbor – attraction on its northeast coast: the Polynesian Cultural Center.

An unlikely-seeming initiative of the Mormon Church, the PCC’s been around for more than half a century, showcasing the history and culture of a number of Polynesian nations scattered across some 12 million miles of ocean. Part theme park, part educational foundation – its employees are local college students, hailing from the various islands, who earn their tuition by working at the center. Say what you want about missionaries and their effects on nonwhite cultures throughout history; this spot at least seeks to redress some of that past by honoring and celebrating indigenous practices and rituals.

We were picked up in a cushy minibus by a friendly, older, part-Hawaiian driver. He offered up bits of Hawaiian history and trivia as he drove the forty-some miles north through the Koʻolau Mountain Range and up along O’ahu’s eastern coast.

I’ve long ruminated about the missing piece in mainland America’s warm-weather geographical puzzle: my adopted homeland’s incredibly diverse landscapes offer up both dry, California-Mediterranean mountainscapes and Floridian pancake-flat tropics – but never do the twain meet on the mainland. The drive north from Waikiki to Laie, however, revealed for me at last that puzzle piece: glorious, rain-drenched, craggy volcanic peaks touch the clouds as they tumble verdantly toward palm-lined coasts. O’ahu is often associated with the tourist tangle of Waikiki and the military presence of Pearl Harbor… but little is mentioned about its stunning geographic beauty.

“What percentage of Hawaii is ethnically native?” I asked Fred, our driver. While the fully-indigenous number only about five percent, he said – still a substantially larger proportion than, say, Native Americans on the mainland – those of mixed heritage (Fred himself is part Portuguese) number many more. With so many locales, towns, streets, and geographic formations retaining their native names, the indigenous presence on these islands gives the place a feel unlike anywhere else I’ve been in the U.S. mainland.

As part of our “Super Ambassador” package, we were met by our private guide for the day. Stop – “like stop sign!” he exclaimed – was a chatty, enthusiastic Thai native who walked us through the various island villages. Unlike, say, a Disney theme park, the PCC adds an up-close and interactive dimension to the mix of island-culture spectacles and exhibits: we practiced spear throwing (Mathew kicked ass at that) hula dancing (arguably one of my more ridiculous attempts to look graceful) palm-leaf weaving (I was better at that) and making a fire with only two pieces of wood (I got the thing to smoke!) All is presided over by the Center’s charismatic, friendly, comely students. Heck, I even got to practice my French with the Tahitians.

What captivated me most, however, was a nondescript wooden hull resting amid the huts: an early Polynesian outrigger canoe. It was these vessels, the original speedboats to Polynesia, that carried the ancestors of these youngsters thousands of miles across open ocean to these far-flung islands at the edge of creation.

The Center’s marquee attraction, however, comes after dark: going beyond the ceremonies one finds at traditional Hawaiian luaus, the PCC’s nightly show, “Ha: Breath of Life,” is a Vegas-level tour-de-force held in a capacious, outdoor semicircular theatre. Chronicling the rhythms of life of a traditional Polynesian boy who grows to manhood, the show features masterfully-choreographed performances, capped by a dazzling fire-twirling number at the show’s finale that blew away what I’d seen in years past on beaches in Southeast Asia. Between that and the experiential IMAX film we’d seen showcasing the Hawaiian islands’ geography, I left moved and astounded by this glorious part of the world and its peoples’ mastery of its riches.

I’d gone for a dunk in Waikiki Beach on our first day, but that only whetted my appetite for more Hawaiian surf. While O’ahu’s south- and east-facing beaches feature modest waves, the bodysurfer in me – egged on by a reco from Stop the day before – opted to go for the gold: we snagged a rental car, traversed the island and its pineapple plantations en route to its famed North Shore. Arriving at beautiful Waimea Bay, we beheld them: fat barrel rolls at the shorebreak. Families splashed and played amid stern admonishments from surly lifeguards that “this is a beach for professionals with many years of experience!” I (mostly) played it safe, catching swims during lulls between the big waves, but also did a bit of bodysurfing on some of the bigger swells. The lifeguards weren’t kidding: this spot (in winter at least, when the big waves come) took most of my skill as a Bronze Medallion holder (Canada’s first-level lifeguarding course that I completed in high school) to avoid getting crushed by massive wave energy.

That evening, our last in Waikiki, saw us do an impromptu bit of shopping while waiting for a table for dinner. Mathew and I stopped in at a jewelry store, where a friendly older Asian lady showed us an array of tungsten rings. The price was right and the look was good, so we did it: having made our domestic partnership official earlier this year, we now have some (tasteful) bling to mark the occasion.

As our aerial speedboat from Polynesia lifted off from Honolulu Airport next afternoon, I beheld the dense thicket of Waikiki skyscrapers abutting the jagged, volcanic Diamond Head crater. As the elegant neighborhood of Kahala and the beach towns of eastern O’ahu faded from view, I felt an odd kinship with the people of these islands; after all, they descend from the truest of world travelers, intrepid outrigger explorers who braved Earth’s largest ocean to settle in their beautiful little corner of the known world.

Las Vegas and Britney Spears have a thing or two in common: both are massive pop-culture icons that draw huge crowds, toss out loads of glitz and flash… and get no love from the higher-brow set. Both have had their ups and downs, their huge successes, their implosions.

Interestingly, I’ve often had similar reactions to both city and pop superstar: I’ve gleaned unexpected resonance from both, but I’ve never felt too strongly one way or the other about either. Vegas is, I feel, underappreciated: taken on its terms as an oversized adult playground, it delivers handily. Ditto BritBrit: I’ve long held the notion that high culture and pop culture are inextricably intertwined. Shakespeare wrote for the masses; classical music often drew on folk melodies; Dickens was a popular serial writer. For me, therefore, a certain appreciation for pop culture has always been a mainstay.

Amp that up a couple thousand notches for Mathew, my boyfriend of over one year. His devotion to and obsession with madame Spears is the stuff of legend — heck, he got his career start as a tech marketer building (and publicizing) a Britney fan site when he was a young teen. Britney was good to him: he sold that site and some others for a tidy sum a few years later.

With those notions in mind, I boarded a Southwest flight on Thursday afternoon for Sin City.

Chalk this trip up to yet another with an inauspicious beginning: a flight delay leaving San Francisco and heading east, into the desert; that disorienting feeling when arriving at one of the big Vegas hotels (we were staying at Planet Hollywood) and wandering through the ever-humming casino, where it’s neither day nor night. Mathew and his friend Adrienne had arrived earlier in the day so there was the usual disconnect between not-quite-out-of-work mode me and everyone else, already in holiday frame of mind.

I slept fitfully through the night, wondering what the next day had in store. Mathew had paid a premium for up-close general admission seats that, he warned, would entail hours of waiting if we wanted a great view. Disclaimer: I don’t like standing in line for anything. This is gonna be interesting, my mind wandered before finally nodding off.

Next morning, I awoke to realize… I had positively nothing to wear for the evening’s festivities. My ho-hum daily work duds would simply not do for an up-close encounter with my partner’s Earthly deity. So off we went to some shopping up the street, the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace.

When I first visited Vegas a few years back, I was pleasantly surprised by the density and walkability of the Strip… but that was in April. Now, in early September, the desert blast furnace was running on high, and Mathew and Adrienne were wilting from the heat. After our bout of shopping and lunch we cabbed it the two-thirds-of-a-mile back to Britneyland.

It was only mid-afternoon, but no rest for the die-hards: we changed into our concert gear and planted our butts on the floor outside the theatre some five hours before the 90-minute show was set to begin. Other than one other fellow on his headphones on the ground nearby, we were the first ones there.

Not long after, a small clutter of others sat beside us in line. We soon struck up conversations, and I realized Mathew was not alone in his Britney fandom. Comparisons were made between the faithful: first album purchase; favorite concert moments; set lists for the upcoming show. Our cohorts hailed from everywhere: a drag queen from Alaska; a fellow and his galpal from Albany, NY; a gay couple from the Netherlands. A group behind us even briefed us on best-practices and etiquette for snagging the best viewing spot — though this latter group wasn’t so honorable as concert time approached: after cautioning us not to run to the theatre, one of their number did so and ended up in front of us at the next collection point, by the doors to the theatre. Mathew was not amused.

Still, once the final doors opened and we reached the general admission spot, we found a stellar perch by the catwalk leading off the stage. Showtime drew closer. A countdown popped up on the screen. And then… BAM!! To the strains of “Work Bitch,” Britney and her dancers took the stage.

Confession: I’ve never been a huge fan of concerts. The notion of spending hours in a huge venue, surrounded by shrieking fans, waiting hours through opening acts and endless setups and sound checks only to endure loud, acousically mediocre renditions… no thanks.

But this. This experience was something else.

Long known for her acrobatics and dazzling set design, Britney puts on a show few others can equal. Add the showmanship and production values Vegas spectaculars have long been known for (and a blessedly sweet 90-minute run time), and… wow. Britney emerging from a flame-ringed circle; Britney on the branch of a giant tree; Britney in angel wings; Britney leading some audience member (preselected in advance, I’m told) around on a leash — she called this one a “one-night stand” and managed to work in her recent breakup.

But the most energizing, magical part of the show had to be the reactions of the faithful: Mathew’s face was pure bliss as Britney strode the stage and catwalk a couple of yards from where we stood. As a more intimate venue than a giant arena (Planet Hollywood’s Axis Theatre has a long history of hosting musical acts, and was specially remodeled for this show), and engulfed by loving members of “Britney’s Army,” I couldn’t help but be swept up in it all. By the time the finale, “Till the World Ends,” rang out, I was cheering and whooping it up like a true fan — and found the strains of the concert haunting me in the coming days.

I guess you could call me a Private in Britney’s Army now.

I begin this in the middle of the ocean. Well, on the pool deck of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Navigator of the Seas to be exact. Mexico’s Riviera Maya lies offshore in the hazy distance. Warm tropical winds blow around us as our 139,000-ton vessel exits the Gulf of Mexico into its firm’s namesake waters.

For those familiar with my indie/solo traveler ways, your first reaction is probably “what are you doing on a Caribbean cruise?”

There’s more to it than you’d think. For one thing, I’ve been a fan of great ships for ages — aided and abetted, no doubt, by a certain big-grossing epic from some fifteen years back. But, like so many travel dreams, this one languished — until last Christmas, when my partner Mathew’s family announced that our gift for the season would be this seven-day excursion. They’re experienced cruisers and a family of travel-and-transport fiends (like me). In fact, their plane ride out here included a fab flight on an all-new Boeing 787 aircraft.

As for us, I awoke at dawn on Saturday morning with a mantra on my lips: let this trip start out smoothly, dammit. My last two big voyages this year kicked off with flight delays, missing luggage (mine), food poisoning (Mathew), and the usual discombobulating jet-lag from crossing eight-plus time zones. As we bade our dog and cat farewell and checked in for our flight, everything looked like it was coming up aces.

It was (predictably) a full flight, and being one of the last to board the plane meant I was keeping eyes open for scarce overhead bin space. As we approached our seat, I saw it: a near-virgin bin right above our row. I hurriedly hoisted the bag above our heads — and WHAM! I hit Mathew right in the arm. His still-full grande caramel latte flew out of his hands… and spilled all over the seat (and jacket) of a passenger right in front of us.

The crew were very nice about cleaning up the mess (with our help), and the passenger was quite understanding as well (we even offered to switch seats)… but we were both rattled by the event, and I felt that uneasy mixture of shame, embarrassment, and regret that inevitably bubbles up in situations like this. United Airlines has, in my eyes, partly redeemed itself for its own past bungling in my travel past for how pleasantly and efficiently they handled this (literally) sticky situation.

Next morning, we stuffed the car full of suitcases and the five of us, and crossed the Greater Houston area from north to south. Like many New South cities, Houston operates on a low-density sprawl model. Its downtown of gleaming new skyscrapers — product of its oil industry past and present — contrasted with pockets of poverty we saw throughout. Signs for subsidiaries of Halliburton were scattered around office parks everywhere we went.

Then, driving south along the causeway to Galveston, past steaming refineries and dun-colored freighters, we saw it, gleaming and white: our source of transport, accommodations, dining and entertainment for next week. At over one thousand feet in length, the Navigator and its three sister ships no longer hold the distinction as the largest passenger ships afloat (that now goes to Royal’s newer Oasis class). Still, the sight of one of these behemoths up close is dazzling, a veritable skyscraper turned on its side capable of traveling twenty-plus knots across the waters of the world. The ship towered over Galveston Island and its low-slung historic city core just blocks from the cruise port.

We sailed out of Galveston earlier than expected, and I sat for many minutes, watching the dun-colored waters of the harbor give way to the blue of the Gulf of Mexico. Yep, I admit it: the strains of James Horner’s epic movie theme ran through my head as blue seas rushed past. As a boy reared on epic sci-fi novels and films, I could see where the inspiration for the huge spacecraft of those stories came from as well.

Shortly after came the first seating of one of ocean voyaging’s hallmark events: dinner. Although cruise ships of today have relaxed some of their formal night practices (typically only some nights are dress-up) it’s still a high-ceremony event, with jacketed waiters and personalized service.

“It’s how I learned about fine dining,” said Mathew, who was inspired in part by elegant shipboard dining halls to learn to cook on his own. Malign it as some might, cruising has for many proved an entrée into the elegant ways of yesterday (and today).

The ship’s sailing schedule gave us two full nights and days at sea before arriving at our first port of call. I wasn’t sure what that entailed — but turns out I was in good hands. Mathew and his family have a well-oiled scheme for making the most of shipboard days and nights: I helped the family win at a couple of shipboard trivia games; saw an ice skating show and a Broadway-style revue; posed for formal (and informal) photos; and even had some fun (yes, really) in the shipboard casino. The ship’s staff are selected for their cheerful, fun demeanor, and work hard to ensure that days on the waves are as full and fun as possible.

Day Four of the cruise began with me peering out the large window of our ocean view cabin… and, after two days of seeing nothing but water, I beheld mountainous, forested tropical landscapes passing by our window. It was our first port of call, the island of Roatán, Honduras.

The port was a pretty blend of tidy, pastel-tinted colonial-style buildings with shops (natch) flanking the dock for our ship. Giant blue mooring lines connected the ship to sturdy concrete anchor posts squatting in blue waters. As we disembarked, a lively, loud Caribbean drum circle pulsed out rapid beats as natively-clad dancers jigged and jumped. OK, a bit touristy for my taste.

We were soon whisked away for our onshore excursion for the day. A tidy, air-conditioned 26-seat Hyundai minibus pulled away from the port; as we departed and pulled through the (unfortunately named) town of Coxen Hole, our guide gave us a little background on the place.

“It was named after the pirate Coxen,” he said in Spanish-accented English. While Honduras is nominally Spanish-speaking (one of our bus-mates asked if they ate Mexican food — oh, Americans and geography!) Roatán is something of a mix.

“There is Spanish, which is the Catholic religion,” our guide explained. “But there is also black, who speak Creole English, and white English, who are Protestant.” The British set up shop here centuries ago during the era of piracy and privateering (one way to build an empire in the shadow of incumbent Spain of the day: steal their stuff); apparently the island’s riches are still controlled by a small number of white families. As if on cue, our guide pointed to a mansion, all white and curlicued columns, astride a hillside. The large homes I’d seen on the island’s western point are apparently of similar ilk. Meanwhile, just outside the port, machine-gunned guards flanked the entryway.

We drove up into the hills for the activity we’d booked for the day: I’d been meaning to go ziplining for years, and a hilly, tropical island seemed like the right place to do it. After a quick safety and maneuvering training session, our guides strapped on the bewildering array of harnesses and steel pulleys and hooks. The first line was short, more a training drill to get familiar with the vagaries of braking, foot positioning, and spin avoidance. But the second two lines were where it really got going: over 1,500 feet in length and flying dozens of feet over the tropical canopy, it offered a windy, exhilarating rush, couple with stellar views of green island and blue seas. We continued down, down, down through a series of shorter, connected ziplines, winding our way back to base camp. I may have even belted out my rendition of the Tarzan roar as we zipped across the canopy.

A change of pace for us the next day; we awoke to the ship anchored offshore from Belize City. Mathew and I decided to make this our “stay on the ship while it’s in port” day. It’s often a nice respite from the crowds on the vessel; as we chilled out at the deserted Cosmopolitan Lounge, the ship’s panoramic spot on Deck 14, we spied an equally empty pool deck where just two days ago Mathew had to (somewhat sternly) remind a fellow who’d abandoned his family’s set of deck chairs to go for a a swim that (per signs posted everywhere) deck chairs are not to be reserved on a limited-space pool area. Yeesh. I’m new to cruising but even I know that.

Next morning, we hit our last — and, for me, the most significant — port of call, a place where I’d already made quite a few memories: Cozumel, Mexico.

Compared to sleepy Roatán and distant, offshore Belize City, arriving in Cozumel felt like something of a return to civilization: in addition to a sizable vacation destination for both Mexicans and international visitors, it’s arguably the biggest cruise ship stopover point in the Western Caribbean. Outside our stateroom window loomed the biggest passenger ship afloat, the Allure of the Seas, where just over a year ago my sister and her family (including my ship-nut nephew Jackson, who I took to Europe this winter) embarked on a cruise adventure of their own.

After clawing our way through the crowds, shops, and touts at the cruise pier, we snagged transport for the day. This time we did it indie-travel-style: we set off on a 110cc Honda motor scooter out toward San Miguel (Cozumel’s main town), then straight across the island to its other side, Mezcalito’s Beach overlooking the Caribbean.

Beaches and oceans have long been a place of reflection and contemplation for me, a cathedral of sorts for we non-religionists. Last time I was here, I bade a tearful farewell to the man who helped give me life, taught me to love the sea. Now I’m here with a new job, a partner, more settled-ness in the city I now call home. A lot of changes since I last gazed upon these unending waves.

Some bodysurfing in the sea, a bit of shopping, then back to the ship for our remaining 36-hour cruise home.

Although I’m not quite the maritime buff as my nephew (who built a six-foot-long model of the Allure out of shirt cardboard), I’d been hoping to get on some sort of tour of the ship’s innards during our journey. Alas, since 9/11 such forays have been suspended, but our captain, a friendly Norwegian fellow who’s been sailing with Royal for some fifteen years, gave a talk that final afternoon that covered most of the bases. He even complimented my question to him in the Q&A, where I asked, in the wake of seeing the Allure (over 1,100 feet long and 200,000-plus tons) while now riding on a vessel that was once the world’s biggest (1,000-plus feet long and 130,000-plus tons)… “How big can they get?”

The answer proved fascinating: since the Titanic tragedy, an international maritime convention (SOLAS, Safety Of Life at Sea) has tightly regulated all minutiae of ship safety; one key determinant is lifeboat capacity — not only how many, but how many people they’re allowed to hold. Oasis and Allure are too massive for standard 150-person lifeboats… so those intrepids shipbuilders, working with safety regulators, fashioned new ones.

As for how much bigger ships could get? Captain Klaus noted that the biggest oil tanker clocks in at around double the total tonnage of either Oasis and Allure… so it’s anyone’s guess what the future has in store.

I’d mostly missed all the past sunsets on the ship — we were busy with dinner or post-dinner activities each night. So I was determined, with the timing now just right, to catch a glimpse of the setting orb on our final dusk at sea. I’ve long since known that the legendary scene in Titanic, where Rose and Jack kiss for the first time above the bow of that great ship, was not only fictive but in fact impossible: ocean liners and cruise ships normally store anchors and heavy machinery up front, and passengers are barred from such places. With that in mind, I dragged Mathew and his brother to the ship’s topmost deck, where I began this entry… only to spy a gaggle of other passengers some five decks below — right in front of the ship’s helipad at the very, very prow of the great vessel.

Oh yeah!

We scurried down to Deck Four, where, indeed, a semi-hidden stairway led to the triangular frontmost portion of the ship. A scattering of people were calmly taking in the orange fiery ball in front of us. I stood at the prow and felt myself go light, levitating as those James Cameron characters had done all those years ago before me on a silver screen. All that had been, all that was to be… it all came rushing to the fore of my psyche as I beheld the elemental passing of day into night.

Sometimes reality really does live up to our dreams, and life itself transforms into art.

Most cruises arrive back at home port early in the morning — sometimes hours before their scheduled arrival time. We were a model of punctuality — a treat for we newbie cruisers: I awoke to see our ship completing final maneuvers… not realizing one final surprise was in store.

It wasn’t at Customs  — no problems there — but instead somewhere a lot more prosaic. Mathew’s spider sense caught it first, as we left the cruise terminal and entered a slightly-worn minivan taxicab at the pier’s taxi stand. It was piloted by a heavyset, gabby woman with missing front teeth and a strictly “cash only” policy. As we rode north along the Gulf Freeway toward Houston, we saw multiple warning signs indicating a massive accident and total freeway closure up ahead. A scan of Google Maps confirmed it: thick red lines up and down the freeway a few miles from our position. I had half a mind to notify our driver (who had nary a GPS unit nor smartphone in sight), but figured Houston on a holiday weekend morning after a cruise was no time to be playing backseat driver. I later learned that Brenda, Mathew’s Mom, had also repeatedly pointed out the warnings to driver gal, only to have her wave them away as nothing.

We got to the congestion point — soon corroborated by the radio as a major fatality accident — and sure enough, traffic slowed to a standstill. Thirty minutes went by. Forty-five. An hour. I was already quite anxious, and by now so was the rest of the Guiver family. I tried to ask the driver if she knew what was up, if her dispatcher had any more information, and got a curt reply.

“I don’t have a dispatcher. I got ma keys. I got ma meter. That’s all!”

As Hour Two rolled on and we’d barely moved a few hundred feet, I began suggesting we perhaps exit the vehicle and haul ourselves and our luggage over to the next exit — now barely a quarter mile away but at the rate we were moving, probably well over an hour by car. We’re gonna miss our flight, said my mind. Mathew and I agreed to do a quick reconnoiter and hopped out of the car, to our driver’s irritation. Sure enough, we saw the exit just ahead through the apocalypse of frozen vehicles.

We hurried back to the vehicle, where we later learned our cabbie had begun asking Mathew’s family if they were “good Christians,” and to join her in prayer. Whether it was that or simple exasperation, the gang of us decided we’d had enough, and in spite of our driver barking at us to “get back in NOW,” we threw a hundred bucks her way, grabbed our voluminous suitcases, and hauled ass down the freeway off-ramp, over the concrete divider to a nearby Shell station in the blazing, humid, Texas heat.

Houston, we have a problem indeed. With the freeway stil gridlocked, we found a (more competent) cabbie who got us to the airport on time. Another travel adventure complete. As we embraced farewell at the airport, I felt a bond had been cemented between us all… to say nothing of the fact that, after eons of wanting, waiting, wishing, I feel I’ve found my sea legs at last.

Since coming home from my big world journey in 2009, I’ve dreamed and contemplated the next big adventure. I keep coming back to the notion of a multi-monther around the Med, hitting up many spots on my still-long bucket list: Spain, Portugal (not quite the Med but close enough), Morocco (ditto), Turkey, Greece, Lebanon… I could go on.

With work and life keeping a longer trip at bay, however, I positively jumped at the chance to accompany Mathew, my boyfriend of almost a year, when he said he and a friend of his teaching in Egypt wanted to meet somewhere not too distant from Cairo. We looked on a map and found what looked to be a perfect meeting point for both the time of year and our tight springtime schedules.

Malta.

The first leg of the journey revisited the familiar: a 747 British Airways Speedbird across North America and out over the far North Atlantic. Unlike my journey last month with my nephew, I actually got a respectable few hours sleep on the plane, awakening with the coast of Ireland on the moving map’s right-hand side. Mathew, alas, wasn’t so lucky: coming off a month-long raw food cleanse, and having had some rather cheesy pasta for dinner, he began feeling ill partway into the flight and spent much of it nauseous and worse. Given his normally hardy constitution, I was a bit concerned as we rode the Heathrow Express into the city and headed to our hotel in South Kensington. But he held his own, and after a short rest was ready to head to our one scheduled event on this overnight stopover.

My parents met for the first time in the British capital in 1968, and their 18-hour first date has become the stuff of family legend. They went for dinner at an old-fashioned English carvery that’s still around in all its old-world glory. When we discovered the place was still very much around, Mathew suggested we check it out… And so, dressed in our slightly-fabulous best, we took an incredibly-crowded Tube over to Simpson’s in the Strand and relived my family’s origin story.

And then, off to Malta. A reasonably quick, half-empty flight on the nation’s flag carrier, then a drive to our accommodations in St. Julian’s, a seafront district adjacent the Maltese tourist hub of Paceville. Malta’s distinctive architecture — white limestone buildings with square painted bay windows — was everywhere apparent. Mathew’s friend Jasmin met us at the tidy two-bedroom apartment we’d booked for the week for dinner and a catch-up on the past nine months.

“It’s been really different since the Revolution,” Jasmin said. The hope of the Arab Spring has faded in Egypt. Most of the big foreign universities and embassies located near Tahrir Square that I spotted (and occasionally tried to photograph) in my travels back in 2008 have relocated out of the city center.

“I guess I was a bit naive going in,” she added, having only visited the country once before some five years back. While her safety has generally not been in question – well-to-do enclaves in even the most dangerous of places typically know how to keep themselves protected – the generalized stress of living in a land of protests and gunfire, of curfews and marginalized rights for women, inevitably takes its toll.

And yet… I know many who may judge, who may leap to say “I told you so,” but as a global trekker I disagree: it’s those experiences in foreign (and sometimes uncomfortable) locales that make the life of a traveler vital, interesting, precious. Mathew, ever the Internet marketer, seized upon her situation – doing work as beneficial yet prosaic as education amid a backdrop of historic turmoil and change – as a fantastic opportunity to document, to chronicle her experiences living history firsthand. Having had forebears who endured World Wars and national struggles for independence across the globe, I can attest to the importance of telling those stories.

Next day, with the weather humid but a bit cloudy, we crossed Paceville on foot in search of coffee and breakfast… and ran smack into the “we’re not in California  (or big-city Europe) anymore”. Mathew tried in vain to find a cafe with almond or soy milk. Abandoning that quest, we whiled away some of the afternoon at the charming little sandy beach nearby on St. George’s Bay.

Better beach luck tomorrow, we hoped… or maybe not. We again woke to cloudy skies, initially putting a damper on our plans to visit Golden Bay and Malta’s one fabled, secluded nude beach (unlike a lot of Europe, the island nation is a mite conservative on such matters). Still, we decided to go for it: we boarded one of the island’s efficient buses and rode through narrow medieval streets and across vineyards sprawling across rolling hillsides to the western shore.

Once more, the weather deities cooperated: the cloud layer thinned, revealing dazzling blue waters splashing against bright limestone cliffs. Google Maps pointed us toward some narrow, steep hiking trails over one bay and into another. Over hill and dale, we finally reached an isolated tongue of land with a telltale marker that we’d reached Point Nude: carved into the soft rock was a big cock-and-balls.

The Mediterranean’s still pretty chilly in late-April, and my water princess self normally refuses to dunk in seas colder than 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, Mathew’s baseball cap had other plans: it flew off his head in the wind and landed in the seas below.

“It’s my favorite one!” He cried, with a pizza design he later discovered Beyonce wearing on a shirt. Suffice it to say we went in after it. The things we do for love.

Next day, some stuff closer in: a bit of shopping in Sliema (note to self: do not bring clothes-aholic boyfriend to European Zara ever again). Then a bus around the bay to Valletta, Malta’s capital and the inner core of the urban area where we were based. Its narrow maze of streets — grid-style, a rarity in the old world — stretched out like medieval webbing across the tip of a narrow peninsula. After discovering the city’s cathedral was closed at the hour we visited, we nonetheless made it to the Sanctuary Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, taking in its glorious dome and vaguely eastern-style Christian iconography. We walked along the medieval ramparts, imagining ourselves as old-time knights or mythical characters from the Books and TV series Game of Thrones (the first season of which was filmed partly around here).

“Hey check it out,” Mathew said, pointing at a restaurant listing on his laptop. “This place has a vegetarian menu!”

We were hopeful that the upscale Thai joint he discovered would offer more options… but when we got to the establishment — a theme-y eatery in the Hilton with soft Asian music playing in the background — we got the sense they kinda didn’t want us there. After waiting and waiting and feeling more and more brushed off, we hoofed it out of there and went uber-casual for dinner instead. I’m still not quite sure what happened, but I get the sense that old-school notions still persist here, and our youthful appearance and casual (though not too casual) attire may have been to blame.

After all, it’s not everywhere that a hoodie-clad twentysomething could be a software billionaire.

Something else you should do on an island is get off it for a spell. So, next morning, we hopped on a vintage Turkish Gulet for a boat tour. Although both Jasmin and Mathew suffer occasional seasickness (I don’t, interestingly enough; bumpy cars and planes are my Achilles heel), they were confident they’d be alright to make this journey… that is, until it became apparent that this was no quick ferry trip but potentially a daylong odyssey on a boat with relatively choppy seas.

“Will we be getting off the boat?” I inquired to the fellows piloting the craft as I popped my head into the ship’s mini-bridge.

“Maybe, if we get lucky,” one replied. That didn’t seem like much of a response, so I inquired a bit further.

“You say only one question, now you ask three!” snapped the skipper, a salty seadog with persona inspired by Robert Shaw‘s character in Jaws. I returned to my concerned (and slightly ill) party, who were starting to kick themselves for us not researching this further. As we cruised away from Malta Island and through the harbor in neighboring Gozo, I was starting to worry as well. Finally we turned and — yes — did make landfall at the Blue Lagoon, a suitably gorgeous, azure stretch of water between the island of Comino and a smaller neighboring islet. Blue, sandy seas gently enveloped rocky yet verdant hillsides. We ate a rather tasty buffet lunch onboard ship (vegetarian options included, to Mathew’s relief) and made Notes To Self: on future such excursions, investigate both off-ship and dining options. Yet another adjustment for us both; for Mathew, this is his first overseas trip not done en famille; for me, well, it’s my first such trip with a partner and friend.

One bit of interesting narration from the crew: Malta’s history as a Christian nation is almost as old as Christianity itself. St. Paul, the religion’s marketing genius, is said to have been shipwrecked here. To this day the islet where that happened (and the bay surrounding it) are named after him.

We bade Jasmin farewell the next morning for her flight home, then on our last day did something that’s become almost old hat for me from Nice to Cape Town to Ko Phangan to Vancouver: we rented a scooter for the afternoon.

Although a similar 125cc number to the one I have back home, this one was had a finicky starter that took some finesse navigating Malta’s stop-and-go traffic. Nonetheless, we made it partway across the island to the country’s ancient capital, Mdina, a tiny walled city with armsbreadth-narrow laneways (no cars allowed, mostly), glorious ancient churches, and one of the most heavenly spots to enjoy lunch, alfresco overlooking the verdant plains and densely-populated seacoast.

From the sublime to the prosaic: I was running low on clothes and figured I’d try my hand at  laundry. Our apartment came with one of those compact European-style wash-and-dry all-in-one units… and it was here that my fondness for new-Old World contraptions came undone. The thing possessed a bewildering array of knobs and meaningless pictograms – and, of course, the one-page set of instructions for the rental unit included nothing on how to work the dratted appliance. Through trial and error, I got my clothes to wash and (sort of) rinse and spin.

Fun times.

After a stellar, friendly dinner (unlike the previous night) at a nearby eatery later that evening, Mathew and I strolled the seafront promenade abutting Spinola Bay and pondered the journey and destination. Malta’s indeed a stellar spot, with millennia of history married to jaw-droppingly beautiful seafront locales. But its integration into Greater Europe still feels incomplete. A British expat on our boat ride the other day explained away some of it to the island nation’s past, of eons of subjugation and occupation by foreign overlords that (he felt) left a populace that’s a bit brusque and wary of outsiders. Fair enough. But I can only hope the Maltese adopt some of the vibe of the Thai, the Khmer, or the Jordanians of my travels, all of whom, in spite of having lived in lands of hardship and adversity, nonetheless put forth a warm, friendly welcome to we errant wanderers of the globe.

For many visitors from North America, London’s where their Europe experience begins and ends. Grand though London may be, however, I wanted to give my nephews and nieces a bit of a broader perspective. Throw in the fact that we all speak French (coming from Montreal) and the proximity of Europe’s two largest cities…and Paris starts to look like a no-brainer.

Getting there was equally simple: we rose bright and early last Friday morning, checked out of our London hotel…and two quick Tube trains later we arrived at the monumental St. Pancras sta74tion. But first – a hop across the way to neighboring Kings Cross station to get a picture in front of the famed Platform Nine and Three-Quarters of Harry Potter lore. When I last visited, there was a simple trolley stuck halfway into a brick wall; well, they’ve made a bigger show of it of late, with a clutter of Asian tourists lined up to have the photo professionally taken, House Gryffindor scarf and all. We opted to skip that and took our own photos, thank you very much.

After that, a re-enactment of my own discovery of real-life wizardry: Jackson and I rode up the angled moving sidewalk to the long conveyance emblazoned with the “Eurostar” logo. We found our appointed seat, and – right on time – rolled out of St. Pancras and were soon racing along the English countryside before disappearing into the tunnel connecting England with France.

Suffice it to say, Jackson was as impressed as I was five years back.

We rolled into Paris a few minutes early, and a couple of hops on the Metro got us to our hotel near the Invalides on the Left Bank. Just as it did when I first laid eyes on this city’s streets, the beauty and majesty of the place overwhelmed us. So did the bread: we stopped in at a local boulanger to have our first taste of Paris baguettes. As good as I remember them.

As it got dark, we strolled to the Champs de Mars nearby. All atwinkle at the end of the park lay the city’s biggest, if not most famous, landmark: that bit of witchery in iron brought to us by Monsieur Eiffel.

As when I was last here, the lines to get into the place, even after dark, were long. This remained the case the next morning, when we strolled past after a breakfast of yummy crepes (banane et chocolat, thank you very much). Vowing to try again at a more off-peak hour, we crossed the Seine and strolled through the 16^th Arrondissement to another of the big Paris landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe.

Jackson’s an avid hockey player, and a goalie to boot, so his legs were in fine shape to make the climb along the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the Arc. Parts of it were closed for restoration (a never-ending battle in monument-saturated European capitals) but enough was open, and the day fine and clear, for us to behold the French capital all around us. 

We then had a most pressing appointment: in Japan a few years back, land of sushi-boat eateries and “maid cafés,” some enterprising restauranteurs had concocted something called a “cat café.” Partnering with local shelters, these establishments served a variety of snacky treats (to the humans) while an array of felines – specially selected for their social demeanor – roamed the place freely and interacted with the patrons. The concept has now spread to Europe, where one opened in Paris last fall and was instantly booked up for weeks. Suffice it to say, crazy cat lady that I have become, a visit to Le Café des Chats was a mandatory part of our agenda. Again, I’m not sure if Jackson obliged out of actual interest or merely to pacify his nutty Uncle David.

The place, occupying a couple of floors of an ancient building in the Marais, was a delight, serving tasty lunches amid the watchful eyes of the furry creatures (no feeding the animals permitted). The cats are indeed friendly – some curl up on people’s laps; others meander the place, brushing up against random chairs and human legs. Atop one cat tree dozed a small tabby – before another black cat jumped up and began eagerly grooming his mate before she decided she’d had enough and jumped off.

A splendid spectacle for all us humans, to be sure. 

“Can we rent a bike?”

Jackson had been asking me that since we got to Paris, the city that was one of the first to introduce bike sharing. The principle is simple: sign up online (one-day “memberships” are now available for less than the cost of a Metro ticket); proceed to a bike sharing station (they’re scattered throughout the city); punch in your membership code at the automated kiosk; select a bike, and voila! You have your own set of two wheels to ride about town. Rentals are by the half-hour, and the bike can be returned to any station with free space.

We rode along the Champs de Mars, passing the Eiffel Tower and its massive queues yet again. We then turned east and rode along the Seine, all the way to the Jardin des Tuileries. After a bit of a hunt of a free Velib station, we ditched the bikes and headed over to the next Paris landmark: The Louvre.

I wasn’t much of an arts/museum nut as a boy, so I made sure not to inflict Jackson with too much of the massive complex’s treasures. We once again snagged the multimedia audioguides I’d rented some five years back. Technology having changed so quickly, however, the then-high-tech guides felt dated and clumsy. We used them to navigate to the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, then pretty much abandoned them as we strolled through the medieval castle ruins and exhibits chronicling the centuries-long growth of the Louvre.

A bite of lunch, then home via a different scenic route: although the Seine isn’t a much of a commuter river as the Thames in London, there is a river ferry service that (more languidly) makes several stops around the city. We hopped on the Batobus near Notre Dame, rounded the islands of the Seine where Paris began millennia ago, then headed back westward before getting off at the Pont Alexandre. We crossed the magnificent bridge and ambled over the great lawn in front of the Invalides. It was glorious out, and Parisians of all ages were sunning themselves or playing soccer (what else?).

The next morning, we willed ourselves to get up early to see the ever-crowded Paris icon that beckoned so close to our accommodations. Grabbing some juice from a local Carrefour market, some pain au chocolat from a local bakery, and some coffee to go from a nearby café, we marched up the Champs de Mars and planted ourselves in the blessedly short (but rapidly growing) line for la Tour Eiffel.

“Do you know how tall it is?” asked some Dutch visitors in line beside us. Surprisingly, I got the height (almost) right; the tower’s about a thousand feet tall (uhm, three hundred meters), a bit shorter than the John Hancock Center in Chicago. Only a moderately tall structure today, in the age of the Burj Khalifa and Shanghai Tower – but consider that it was built 125 years ago and remained the manmade-structure champ for over forty years after its construction, and its impact appears clear.

Our impulse to come early was right-on: as the place opened at 9:30 we had a very short wait to buy tickets and clamber aboard the inclined elevators that ascend smoothly to the first level.

The view was splendid from the mid-level platform, but things really kicked into high gear as we reached the top. The day was a bit hazy, but that only added to the magic of the scene: with no tall buildings nearby, Paris was laid out like a blanket before us, curving mansard roofs wrapping around buildings like giant gift boxes. In the hazy distance, the modern towers of La Defense stood like soldiers massed on the city’s perimeter. The hill of Montmartre crouched toylike in the distance. And the grounds of the Champs de Mars and the Trocadéro across the Seine bracketed the tower with jewel-like symmetry. As with so many so many spots dubbed “grand” or “breathtaking” around the world, photos can only capture a fragment of the true experience.

As I’ve said to Jackson many times, this is one reason why we must travel.

When in Europe, one must visit churches — if only for their sheer majesty, beauty, and architectural innovation. We were already blown away by Winchester Cathedral back in England, but Notre Dame still managed to hold its own in that no-doubnt Middle Ages my-church-is-bigger-than-yours competition. Not too far away, around the Latin Quarter, was a landmark made famous by the movie we’d seen last night: the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the spot alleged to contain part of the “Rose Line” that marked a onetime Prime Meridian running through Paris. Though much of the mythology depicted in the book and film have been debunked (and the Archdiocese of Paris apparently forbade filming in the church – the film scenes are sets and reconstructions), it was still fun to imagine this spot as part of some vast, shadowy conspiracy. No dramatic chase scenes with albino monks for us, though the shaft of sunlight filtering its way through church windows did add a bit of witchery to this neoclassical behemoth perched quietly in a Paris neighborhood.

Many friends and family have been impressed with my going-on-twelve nephew’s fascination with a myriad of subjects, from hockey (he is Canadian, after all) to subways to, shall we say, some other subterranean urban infrastructure. With that in mind, we headed back across town to an attraction Jackson had been curious to check out: les Egouts de Paris, the Paris sewer museum.

Rambling across some old (and thankfully disused) sewer tunnels astride some still-operational storm channels under the Pont de l’Alma, the exhibits were actually incredibly informative. Like urban rail and road networks, sewage is in fact a critical part of what makes modern cities function. Without proper mechanisms to efficiently remove and treat waste, cities in the Middle Ages had become breeding grounds for plagues and disease. It was only in the later 19^th Century, care of engineer Eugène Belgrand in the Baron Haussmann era of urban rebuilding, that the mostly modern techniques of sewage and water were perfected.

Best of all, unlike most Paris attractions, the place was deserted. One tip from this humble visitor that might boost attendance: provide nose plugs. Even though the, shall we say, hardest-working parts of the system aren’t on view, the scent in some areas is still rather ripe.

I guess it’s no wonder we waited a bit to have lunch.

A night’s sleep and a breakfast baguette later, and time to go home: we clambered aboard multiple RER commuter trains and airport connectors to Paris’s second airport, the aging but functional Orly. We got in to Heathrow a few minutes early and had a minor delay there – my first ever with British Airways. But boy, did they make up for it: in addition to favorable winds cutting our arrival delay to barely half an hour, they also, upon learning that it was Jackson’s birthday, gave him a business class meal, an announcement over the PA, a birthday cake with a card signed by the entire flight crew, and a tour of the cockpit after we landed.

Suffice it to say they’ve re-won my loyalty for all future such trips.

We were greeted by Jackson’s entire family at the airport in Montreal. It was an emotional reunion; he’s the eldest and the first family member to take such a voyage. After a bit of birthday cake, the usual parceling out of travel gifts, and much catching up, we collapsed into jetlag-induced slumber.

Okay, I can do this was the thought that went through my head as it hit the pillow.

Much as I’d felt after my first outing on my world trip, I’ve got that “moonshot feeling” — that it’s indeed possible to take a niece or nephew to London and Paris, show them a great time, and deliver them safely home. I aim to make this the first of many journeys across the pond (and possibly elsewhere) with my kin’s new generation of world travelers.