how did you get "The Travel Bug"?
while I made my first intercontinental trip to France in 1959 for a
cousin's wedding in St. Denis Cathedral (Antoine Pinay, the former Prime
Minister, was walking the bride down the aisle, you see my family was
involved in French Politics ;-} the father of the bride was in Monsieur
Pinay's cabinet, and the groom was later a representative from the Loire
etc.)
but I don't really remember much of the trip...

Probably when my family emigrated to New Zealand from England, by
ship, in 1957-8. So I experienced tropical weather for the first time.
I remember quite a lot. The Panama Canal, flying fish beside the boat,
the garbage in Port of Spain harbour, then not getting shore in either
Tahiti or Fiji because I got chickenpox and could just watch from the
isolation ward (best cabin on the ship, but watching policemen in skirts
patrolling Suva docks in the rain had limited fascination even at age 8).

I didn't go anywhere else until I went to Australia and then the US in
1974. Most of the places I've been to since arriving in Scotland in
1976 have been in Turkey and Eastern Europe (knowing enough Turkish to
hold a conversation made all the difference), but I've now been at least
briefly to most countries in Europe except Spain and those bordering on
the Baltic.

My only repeat visit to Fiji was on the way to the US, where we had a
brief stop. Talking to Mormon missionaries in their black uniforms on
their way back to the mothership, at 1am in a tropical night. It felt
like being in a Graham Greene novel. It doesn't seem like Fiji is a
place I'm destined to see again. (Smoked a fair bit of one of their
main exports when I was in NZ).

==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === http://www.campin.me.uk ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******