I had been to travel writing conferences, and book festivals, but until this past weekend I had never been to a travel writing festival.

It seemed about time that travel writing got its own celebration. And a wonderful celebration it was. (Put on for the first time, and pulled off with great elan, by Jackie Dutton of the University of Melbourne.)

Of course I'm biased, since I participated. I gave a talk at the start, which unfortunately caused me to miss Elaine Lewis's session about her time running an Australian bookstore in Paris (which she charmingly records in her book Left Bank Waltz).

Someone questioned my remark about the declining popularity of travel books, noting that in Australia they are doing very well. I had noticed that, actually, on my visits to Melbourne bookstores. I told him that in the big chain bookstores in the States, the shelves of travel narratives had gotten smaller over the last few years. And -- though I didn't say this -- we don't have travel writing festivals.

In the afternoon I caught Angus McDonald's slide show of Indian hill trains. His stunning photographs -- accompanied by classical Indian music -- beautifully transported his audience to the subcontinent.

Since Melbourne is the home of Lonely Planet, three of their authors conducted a lively conversation on the workings of guidebook writers.

Sunday I taught a four-hour workshop, which made me miss more interesting authors: Arnold Zable, Josiane Behmoiras (on a subject dear to my heart: slow travel), Robert Dessaix. But my students were fascinating in their own right, revealing, in brief asides, travel experiences that humbled my modest exploits. (One woman casually mentioned a few years spent in Ethiopia.) I once wrote a column calling the Germans the "world's best travelers" but I may have to change that to the Australians. (I haven't heard of any travel writing festivals in Germany.)

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The nice thing about the barebones U.S airlines is that they make flying foreign airlines seem luxurious.

Stepping off my American Airlines flight at LAX and boarding Qantas was a bit like moving from coach to first class, even though -- in row 46 - I was far from the front. I showed my boarding pass and was directed to the back by a flight attendant who addressed me as "Mr. Swick."

Once in the air we were fed dinner -- a choice of seared salmon with snow peas or chicken with orzo salad. Before going to sleep, we were each handed a little bag containing a bottle of water, a dried fruit snack, oatmeal cookies, and M&Ms. To help us through the night.


I slept, talked to my seatmate -- a Qantas mechanic flying back to Adelaide -- and caught up on movies: Smart People, The Band's Visit, Charlie Wilson's War -- shown on the screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of me."

We had two breakfasts -- the reward for stopping in Auckland -- and arrived in Melbourne a little after 9 am -- about 26 hours after I left Miami. If there are any typos in this, that's why.

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"Are you done?" I asked the man leaving the lobby computer.

"I'm out of here," he said. "I'm history. Soon moving into myth."

I'm staying at the Graduate House on the campus of the University of Melbourne (to sort of help explain that dialogue).

Though this is my second time in Australia, this is the first time I've felt that I've come to the other side of the world. It's not that planes have gotten faster. It's because nine years ago I flew straight to Cairns and the heat and humidity, the lush vegetation, were -- after 20-odd hours of sky -- right where I'd left off.

This time I arrived in wintry Melbourne. Yesterday was a lovely day -- partly sunny, in the high 50s -- but the slanting sunlight on facades, gray clouds seen through a web of leafless branches -- were things I hadn't seen in years. It is the landscape of my childhood, but one I associate with the time right after Christmas, not right after the Fourth of July.

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I'm leaving Sunday (arriving Tuesday) to participate in the Melbourne Festival of Travel Writing. I'll be posting dispatches from time to time (but definitely not Monday).

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Turkey's in the news again and, as usual, the news is not good. Yesterday gunmen attacked the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, killing three policemen.

News is often negative, because it is by definition a recording of things outside the norm. But Turkey seems to suffer more bad news than most countries.

Yet when people ask me to name my favorite places, I always mention Turkey. It was one of those rare countries in which I was made to feel not like a tourist but like a guest. And not just in one city, but everywhere I went: Istanbul, Urgup, Ankara, Konya, Fethiye, Selcuk. The hospitality of the Turks - sometimes demonstrated through the simplest of gestures - touched me in a way that has rarely been replicated in my travels.

Of course, there is great political and religious tension in the country. But it rarely touches tourists. The consulate that was attacked yesterday is a 20-minute drive from the center of Istanbul, in a neighborhood unknown to tour buses.

Terrorism is one of the sad facts of 21st century life, and you're no more immune to it at home than you are on the road. It shouldn't dissuade anyone from traveling, especially to a place where you will be received with respect and gratitude.


Photo: The Golden Horn in Istanbul with a view across the way of the 14th century Galata Tower. Tom Swick, 1998.

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Our tennis writer Charles Bricker sent this dispatch just before the start of Wimbledon:

The British rail system is onto something, but it’s not cost-cutting.

The cost of traveling around this island is beyond an arm and a leg. We’re into other body parts, including your stomach if you’re nervy enough to buy anything in the café car.

However. . .(pause for effect) . . . there is internet on many of the National Railway cars. You’re thinking, “If Amtrak had this, and of course didn’t arrive more than two hours late for every trip, I might consider riding the rails more often in the U.S.”

I’m going to have to admit to my biggest mistake on this two-month European holiday/work odyssey. When I ordered my Brit Rail pass from one of those online companies in the U.S., I sloppily ordered the four-day “consecutive” pass rather than the four-days-in-a-month pass. Or maybe they made the mistake. I’m not sure. I’ll have a talk with them when I get back.

In the meantime, I found out rather quickly on my initial journey, from Euston Station London to Windermere, that this pass ($369, all in first class), could only be used on four consecutive days, beginning with my first trip. Don’t you make the same mistake.

I dealt with it when I got to Windermere, and it didn’t turn out too badly, though it could have. It’s only recently that the British rail people corrected the glitch in their ticket machines, which sold you the most expensive ticket possible for your journey.

If you still don’t trust the reprogrammed machines, and I don’t, go directly to a ticket agent at the station and tell him, in distinct terms, “Hi, I’d like the cheapest possible ticket(s) from here to there.”

So I purchased three trips – Windermere to Glasgow; Glasgow to Nottingham; and Nottingham to London.

It was about $20 from Windermere to Glasgow; $90 from Glasgow to Nottingham; and another $90 from Nottingham to London. It would have been twice as much if you went to a ticket machine and had no idea how to cheapen the ticket.

And so I’ve had my holiday time, from the Lake District to Glasgow and Nottingham and I arrived in London after a brisk, two-hour ride from Robin Hood country to St.Pancras station, just short of 9 a.m.

It was an easy ride on the Underground from St. Pancras to Gloucester Road, two blocks from my hotel. It’s good to settle in, unpack the bags, find things I thought I’d lost along the way and hang up some clothes that had been gathering wrinkles for weeks.

To regress to Glasgow, this was my third trip there and it hasn’t changed much, which is good. There’s wonderful contrast in this vibrant, very alive city. There’s old Glasgow and new Glasgow. There is striking contemporary architecture along the main streets, adjacent to 17th and 18th Century buildings. It’s still less expensive than England, right down to the free Kelvingrove Art Museum, which had an astonishingly fine display of celebrity photographs by the noted Scot Harry Benson.

This is a hard-drinking city and it wasn’t unusual to drop into a bar/restaurant near the rail station about 4 p.m. and find it jammed with a lot of very heavy and unhealthy looking people throwing down pints.

It’s gotten so bad the government is taking measures to curtail rampant drinking. Somehow, I find that effort laughable.

I spent most of one day in Glasgow on Byers Road, which had been shut off to vehicle traffic for Scotland’s version of Mardi Gras. No floats and no one throwing beads. But there were bands everywhere and tens of thousands having a great time.

It’s now Saturday at Wimbledon, two days before the start of the tournament, and it’s the first time I’ve encountered real, persistent rain since I arrived in the UK on June 9. I recall telling myself, “This great weather can’t go on. Wait till I get to Wimbledon.” Sure enough.

The pound is lingering at $1.97 and it’s brutal, but I just have to keep telling myself, “I’m not buying gas. . .I’m not buying gas.”

Cheers.

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Charles Bricker writes from Ambleside:

I’m out of Paris with 11 days to myself before I storm the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

I decided months ago to return to the Lake District of England. I don’t deal well with crowds. I need beauty, quiet, nice people, no honking horns from impatient motorists, no rap music and, more than anything, a sense that there is still some respect for nature in the world.

It’s all there in the Lake District, and this is my fourth trip. I’ve stayed in Bowness-on-Windermere, which is quite full of holiday makers and day trippers throughout the summer. And I’ve stayed in Grasmere, where William Wordsworth lived, and died. It’s a beautiful village, but a village nevertheless and not bubbling over with hotels and stores.

This time, Ambleside, about five miles east of Grasmere and just large enough.

The Lake District this time of the year is a fascinating mix of young and old tourists. I’m not sure why the elderly come here, like the 60ish Scottish couple who sat at the adjacent table as I dined at Mathews Bistro the other night. They seemed surprised to find out I was off on another hike in the morning.

“Oh no, we don’t hike,” she said with a thick Scottish accent. “We just like it here.”

As do I. But this place is fundamentally for hiking and I’ve had some memorable walks here, including one two years ago that took nearly six hours to complete. Before you compliment me on my stamina, know that the hike should have been four hours.

You do get a bit lost, for two reasons. First, the well worn paths you start on become more than a little vague as you get up with the mountain goats. In fact, it’s easy to lose a trail where they’re nothing but rock.

Also, the walk guidebooks you can buy at the local Tourist Information shops for a couple pounds are outdated. I’ve done hikes where I followed the book directions to the last dotted i and gotten temporily lost because, for one reason or another, the trails change.

The six-hour hike left me scratching my head after four hours, but I fortunately ran into one of those classic Lake hikers – real boots, walking stick, jaunty cap.

“Can you help me find my way back to Grasmere?” I inquired. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Just walk across this meadow here and when you get to the edge, look down and you’ll see a tarn (a small body of water in the mountains). Go down to the tarn and you’ll see a footpath around it, and it will take you straight back to Grasmere.”

He was spot on with the directions, but there was no path down to the tarn. I had to slosh my way down a small creek, stepping on rocks until I reached the bottom, and it took an hour. But I got back all right, had a pint of something or other at the Lions Inn pub and was in bed and sleeping soundly by 9.

I’ve got three more days here and, while the weather has dropped into the high 50s, it’s dry and I’m a happy puppy. I might go fishing again, as I did at the trout farm south of here. Caught three, one at 2.25 pounds, and released one. Went back to Mathews and for 10 quid the chef grilled my trout and told me how he holds the record out of that lake – a 26-pounder that took more than an hour to land.

It was a bit of cheat by me. This was, after all, a stocked pond. But, hey, a trout is a trout and I need my protein.

Go fish. Notice the swan behind me, waiting for the fish to be gutted so he can be fed.

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I woke up not even realizing it, but when I arrived here at the office I found an e-mail alerting me to the fact that June 10 is Portugal Day.

I should have known, as Portugal is one of my favorite countries. I first went there in 1989, after having visited most of Europe. And from the first day I had a good feeling about the place. I got the impression I was being treated not like a tourist - as is usually the case - but like a guest. The people had a sweet, relaxed, considerate disposition.

This is reflected in their national holiday. Unlike many countries, whose national days commemorate independence or constitutions or military triumphs, Portugal honors a poet: Luís Vaz de Camões, who died on this day in 1580.

Camões' great work was The Lusiads, an epic poem about Vasco da Gama's voyage to India. Camoes himself was, as the translator Landeg White writes in his introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of the poem, "the first European artist to cross the Equator and experience Africa and India at first hand."

So here's to a great country, with a great tradition of travel.

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Waiting for the start of the French Open, my colleague Charles Bricker writes:

Around 7:30 on Wednesday I flicked on the six-inch TV set bolted to the wall of my otherwise wonderful little hotel room in Tarascon-sur-Ariege and was jolted almost immediately by the sound of the G word on the morning newscast.

Greve.

Which in French means “strike.”

Once again, for I believe the 1,457,677th time, French railway workers were declaring a work stoppage, at midnight that evening. Maybe they’re chronically underpaid. I don’t know. What I do know is that they are the single most significant vacation killers in France.

My plan, after two spectacular days in the Pyrenees, had been to drive the 100 kilometers north to Toulouse, dump the rental car and hop the 1:43 p.m. train to Bordeaux, stay overnight and ride the TGV fast train three hours into Paris to go to work on Thursday.

No problem with getting to Bordeaux. The strike wouldn’t begin until midnight. But I had visions of my Paris train being shut down for the next two days and my editor growling over the delay in getting that Sunday story on Rafael Nadal.

Clearly, I needed a Plan B, and that was to drive to Toulouse and flag a same-day train to Paris before the conductors hit the bricks.

What luck. I never needed to change plans. The TGV service from Bordeaux to Paris was one of the few lines not to be interrupted by the strike and I booked a 7:30 a.m. seat. Greatly relieved, it was much easier now to relive, in my memory and in numerous photos, two and a half days in those spectacular mountains that separate France from Spain.

I got to the Pyrenees on Sunday afternoon and, despite a drizzle, walked for a couple hours in the Parc National des Pyrenees among what must have been hundreds of waterfalls.

I’ve stood by Yosemite Falls and seen Niagara. Nothing can match the speed and power of the melted snow blasting down from the Pyrenees. How do you estimate the speed? Perhaps 70, 80 mph. It was staggering, but there was so much more to come on Monday and Tuesday.

Staying in a B&B just north of the ski village of Cauterets, I backtracked to another two-lane mountain/valley road that ends in the village of Gavarnie.

And where the road ends, the Cirque de Gavarnie hiking trail begins, taking you, in a bit over an hour, up about 3,000 meters to nirvana, a place where you’re surrounded by patches of snow and sensational views of roaring cascades. Cold never felt so good. You stand there doing 360 degrees, looking at some of the greatest natural splendors that have touched your life.

I exited the B&B on Tuesday morning and drove east, through an unending number of villages and past interminable “Centre Ville” signs to Tarascon, alighting, without reservation, at the Hotel de la Poste to take a clean, well-lighted room with shower and free Wifi, overlooking the Ariege River, for 42 Euros (about $65) a night. This is the south of France at the right time – when the weather is good and the prices are not quite in high season.

An hour and a half on Wednesday afternoon was spent on a tour of the Grotte de Nioux, stepping with flashlight in hand through the heavily protected caves that have been a French national treasure since 1906. In the Salon Noir, about 800 meters from the entrance, are the 15,000-year-old drawings of bison and ibex on the cave walls.

This was not merely a trip highlight. It was a lifetime highlight, a plunge back into the Paleolithic era.

It was all too good. It’s also time to go to work. Boss: Nadal is on the way.

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My friend Jim McNalis writes that the news from people inside Burma confirms what we've been hearing on the outside: that the military government is aggravating the suffering caused by the cyclone.

They have sealed off the disaster area and outlawed massive relief efforts. There are reports that when the military finds supplies that have gotten through, they confiscate them. And that when they see people with cameras, they arrest them.

George Orwell, author of Burmese Days as well as 1984, should be around to describe a world in which humanitarian aid is seen as subversive.

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Charles Bricker, our NFL and tennis writer, is enjoying his time in France before the French Open. This is the second in what I hope will be a running correspondence:

The France Pass, allowing three rail trips within a one-month window, was a bit over $300, or approximately what it costs to fill up a gas tank on a French rental car.

Yes, yes. A bit of an exaggeration, but the point is well taken. At the equivalent of $8 a gallon, cars are not such a great bargain anywhere in Europe, and, though I intend to hire a car in Toulouse next week to drive to the Pyrenees, I'm perfectly happy riding the bus and getting around on foot here in Antibes.

Took the 200 mph TGV down from Paris on Saturday, a smooth five-hour ride with stops in Aix and Cannes before alighting in Antibes. The France Pass at 300-and-something dollars is for first-class travel and there was more than enough room to stretch out on the ride down. Don't scrimp on the France Pass. There probably is no better time to be on the Mediterranean than early to mid-May, just before the serious tourist season begins.

Prices are still down and the town is still very largely locals. I'm staying in a modern apartment, which I'm renting from an English couple for about $100 a day. It's on the cape, about a half-mile from the Eden Roc Hotel, which of course was "Gausse's Hotel" in Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night.

This is a peninsula and if you go around the Eden Roc side you wind up in Juan Les Pins, which eventually runs back into Antibes. The walks here are fantastic, whether you're moving up and down the sharply inclined roads on the cape or down below in the town, where the three-block open-air market is open daily and the boats are lined up along their slips near Old Town.

There are exquisite day trips from here. You can be in Monte Carlo in a half-hour by train, though I prefer the slightly shorter ride to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where you can spend hours in the gardens at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild.

It's also not that far north to St. Paul de Vence or the gorges de Loup, if you care for waterfalls and hikes.

It's Monday, yet another holiday in France, which means only a few stores will be open. No country has more national holidays, which goes quite well with a 35-hour week. May 1 was Ascension Day. Last Thursday was Victory Europe day, yet another day off. And, because it was on Thursday, the government always includes a Friday to make the holiday longer.

Today is. . .let me look this up. . .ah, yes, Whit Monday, another holiday. What is Whit Monday? As far as I can make out, it's "the second Monday after Ascension." Why is this a day off? Who knows. I'm not sure even American Catholics have ever heard of Whit Monday.

Anyway, it's 8:45 a.m. The swallows are diving outside the window of my second-floor apartment, doves are cooing off in the distance and the Navette should be arriving at the bus stop, just a few steps outside the door, on its route from Eden Roc back into town. I'm going to catch it, buy a baguette at the boulangerie in the old town and tour the Napoleon Museum. Antibes, as any Frenchman could tell you, is where The Little Guy reappeared on the mainland after his exile to Elba and where he began his march back to Paris.

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The other morning in the elevator a woman asked me if I'd ever been to Nova Scotia.

I told her no. I always hate doing this; I feel like I'm letting people down, and not doing my job. (But if there did exist someone who'd been EVERYWHERE, he'd probably have forgotten half the places.)

She said she and her family were going this summer. They had been planning to go to Europe but it was too expensive.

Canada, I thought, the new Europe. Why not, when we can actually drive there? The people (most of them) speak English. Where this woman's going you can find traces of Scottish Highland culture. In Quebec you can sometimes feel like you're in France. Toronto has a lively Italian neighborhood, hearty Hungarian restaurants, Polish pastry shops heavy with poppy seeds. You can stroll elegant gardens and have afternoon tea in Victoria, British (get it?) Columbia. You can go to Ukrainian festivals in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And who needs the Swiss Alps when you've got the Canadian Rockies?

I'm sure I'm missing other Europe-like attractions. Canadians - lovers of Canada - help me out here.

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