The wide open spaces, the freedom, the clean air, the sanctity of nature, the conservation of the animals on whom their very survival depended.
Bandanaman and Issy in Clark, Colorado
It’s how people lived for centuries in these lands before we found ‘a better way’.
I have my Native American headdress on (though not literally though I did have one as a kid), having signed up for the virtual conference from New Mexico next month.
Buffalo Bill’s grave
It’s just that this COVID business has reminded us all to reconnect with the earth.
All of which you’ll find on an Escorted Tour with your American Holidays
Take their Canyon and American Lands Adventure for 2021.
TV broncos star: In Broncos’ Stadium, Denver
Kick it off in Vegas before departing for Zion National Park and hike Angels Landing.
Next up is Bryce Canyon National Park, renowned for its crimson-coloured sandstones, the hoodoos.
On my way to my next million in Vegas
You’ll recognise Monument Valley from all the old movies and here you’ll learn all about its place in Navajo legend.
Travel through the Navajo Reservation to the Cameron Trading Post to pick up jewellery and your dreamcatcher.
Of course you won’t have to wait long for your dreams to come true as you’ll cap off this unforgettable tour in the Grand Canyon.
The First Americans
Watch it from the rim or hike down it… however you take it in you’ll only sample a fraction.
And if that’s not enough Americana for you then you’ll travel back to Vegas along Route 66.
All this for two from €2099. Price includes return flights Dublin-Vegas. Seven nights’ hotel accommodation and tour guides.
Ban-ban-ban-Bandanaman, Ban-ban-ban-Bandanaman, Take my hand, You got me rockin’ and a rollin’. Rockin’ and a rollin’. Bandanaman.
One of the most seminal pop bands in history, a California travel convention and the reunion of my Scottish poetry group and Edinburgh Festival faves.
It’s great when a Bandana plan comes together which is what happened when I channeled my alter ego for a Zoom meeting with my old poetry grouo.
And showcased my Beach Boys pastiche of their hit Barbara-Anne.
Because it was nearly a year ago that the Beach Boys https://www.thebeachboys.com gave me and my Travel friends a private concert at the American Travel Fair in Anaheim, California www.ipw.com.
When Ne-Yo threw his towel into the crowd and I stretched out to garner it to my chest.
Killer tunes
Cathy Keefe Reynolds, who looks after all the Travel journalists with the care you would would your own children (and we often behaved as such), marked the moment.
On video.
This year in Las Vegas we were promised another cracker.
So what do I have in common with Boris Johnson? The art of scribbling, of course, but also Hergé’s The Further Adventures of Tintin.
It transpires that the most famous ginger boy journalist in history has been keeping the convalescing British prime minister’s spirits up.
Because rather than poring over government papers and that pesky bug the premier has been gorging on Tintin adventures.
Encore Tintin
In French obviously!
More Tintin… this time in English
Maybe though he’s looking for inspiration on how to beat the bug because this coronavirus really could be a script out of a Tintin book.
Un pour Boris
One for Boris
Tintin and the Curse of COVID-19
The one where Tintin and Snowy head for Wuhan and the white fox terrier is captured by wet market traders who want to sell him for food.
And he also exposes a laboratory which is harvesting viruses.
We all need a scientist
All the gang come out, or are there already…
Thomson and Thompson are on a lecher tour, while Bianca Castafiore is performing to adoring Chinese ausiences.
And ‘blistering barnacles’ Captain Haddock is getting into all kinds of scrapes while Professor Calculus is researching a cure.
My journalist hero (no, not Boris)
Of course Tintin has been a hero for Fiftysomething journalists all over the world.
With the BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardiner even retracing Tintin’s steps for a TV special.
Hergé, interestingly, never left Belgium and his grasp of the world came from a photographer friend.
A joke in every line
Which means that the settings were somewhat stylised and his characters stereotyped.
But the adventures were, and still are captivating, and inspired a love of travel in all of us.
His adventures
The first of his 24 books was Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets which he wrote in the Twenties and where Frank revisited. Which you should do… https://www.visitrussia.org.uk.
While Hergé, like many young men in the Twenties was transfixed by America.
Tintin does travel out to China https://www.chinadiscovery.com in The Blue Lotus and other exotic destinations Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Crab with the Golden Claws in Northern Africa.
I got a glimpse of Egypt which just stirred my passion to get out there (I had passed up on Sharm el-Sheikh a couple of years ago) from the Jordan side of the Red Sea.
And I had the type of misadventure that Hergé couldn’t even make up, and which I might even reprise when I stir up some courage again… https://www.visitmorocco.com/en.
The best place to see Hergé, of course, is in his homeland, the Hergé Museum in Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve outside Brussels https://www.museeherge.com/en.
These days we are all confined to barracks and in the case of Boris Johnson bed-ridden by COVID-19.
So why not, do like Boris and let Tintin take you around the world.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883
And earlier in the poem dedicated for the new Statue of Liberty which would sit on the Hudson Bay, a gift from America’s old allies France…
‘Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand. Glows worldwide welcome.’
Today those same French must wait at least 30 days along with the rest of the European Union, or those in the Shengen free-travel zone.
Before they can re-enter America.
The UK, now out of the European Union, is exempt.
While Ireland is a special case.
Which will allow me (for now) to visit the Florida Keys in a week and a half… https://fla-keys.com.
But what will be when the American Travel fair, IPW, throws open its doors in Las Vegas I’ll just have to wait and see.
And hope that my friends who I meet up with every year in an American city will be there.
Swede Agnetha, who I first met in the Czech Republic www.visitczechrepublic.com and was the first journalist I met in Washington Easy DC and have seen every year since.
New York: The Big Apple is a film set at any time of the year and we all know the tradition of the ball drop in Times Square (and I thought that was all behind me as a teenager).
But regardless of what you might be told it’s not just us tourists who pack out the square on the last day of the old year… my own NY rellies do too.
Of course the neon lights, billboards and skyscrapers are worth seeing any time of the year.
And if you do then check out my pal Tom’s Beacon Hotel, the jewel of the Upper West Side. He loves all visitors but especially the Irish…. https://www.beaconhotel.com
Glasgow: I know all about Edinburgh having lived ten years there and Daddy’s Little Girl being born there.
And I also enjoyed more than my fair share of Hogmanays (don’t ask me why) at Merkat Cross in my student days before the whole action was moved up to the Castle and Princes Street.
But while Edinburgh prides itself on its New Year celebrations, its great rival Glasgow has a party every weekend.
The George Square party in 1990 was legendary as it heralded in the Dear Green Place’s year as European City of Culture.
When two likely lads stood in Princes Street in Edinburgh with a signpost saying ‘you are only 55 miles away from the European City of Culture.’
Bandanaman and Issy in Clark, Colorado
Buffalo Bill’s grave
TV broncos star: In Broncos’ Stadium, Denver
On my way to my next million in Vegas
The First Americans
