In my defense it should be pointed out that Bar Harbor was not the main focal point of the vacation I took this summer with a friend. We had spent a week at a cottage in Prince Edward Island, and on the suggestions and urging of my friend, Bar Harbor was inserted into the itinerary for our drive home. She convinced me that Bar Harbor was somewhere that she had always wanted to visit and her life would not be complete if we didn't visit it. Now!

First of all, travel by car is not for everyone. Secondly, car travel is better if it IS the vacation, rather than merely the means of getting from Point A to Point B. We chose driving because despite absurd gasoline prices it was still the most economical means of travel, as well as the fact that neither of us had driven to these areas and wanted to take in the scenery. I think that the ideal situation would be to drive to your destination, spend a restful week and fly home.

Having said that, our side trip to coastal Maine was delightful. Even if the weather was not delightful. Like most areas in central and eastern North America in summer 2008, rain was a constant irritation.

This car trip certainly brought back memories of car trips my sister and I had endured with our parents growing up. Back then we had no idea how far places were and how long it would take us to get there. Well, despite being considerably older, I still had no idea how far places were and how long it would take to get to them. At least on this trip that was the case.

And, did you know that Bar Harbor is on an Island? Of course you knew that. It was only us that discovered this interesting fact as the drive along Bar Harbor Rd. through Ellsworth on the way to Mount Desert Island seemed to take forever. This is where the difference between driving to get somewhere and driving to enjoy the scenery became quite evident.

Considering how tired we were after a day of travelling by car to get to our 'dream' destination, we were extremely pleased with what we found when we arrived in Bar Harbor. We were able to find a very adequate hotel despite arriving without reservations. The hotel we checked into was right on Eden St. at the north edge of town, and we quickly discovered that there was a shuttle bus that passed on a continuous route from the outlying hotels to the center of Bar Harbor. Of course we also quickly discovered that if you weren't right there when the bus passed your hotel it was not going to wait for you. Not to fear though because as I mentioned the buses kept a regular schedule. One caution though. You would have to enjoy bus travel because it is a very "up-and-down" journey and you would need to have a seat or strong arms to hang on to the rail.

Bar Harbor is a very interesting place and our very short stopover just wetted our appetite for more. Another visit is definitely in store. With any luck the weather will be better because a little bit of fog and rain seemed appropriate, but too much rain just put a 'damper' on our visit. Many restaurants and shops will give you plenty to do while in the center of town and the National Park is fantastic. I have to make special mention of one particular shop that got a lot of attention from us. That was a store called Christmas Vacation on the right hand side of the street heading toward the water. You will know it when you get there. Awesome! Ask them if they have any Flamingos!

So, for anyone traveling along the east coast of the United States I would recommend a side trip to Bar Harbor, Maine. You just never know what you will find there. You may even find me there!

Buy a ticket that lasts 24 hours and you can ride the bus as often as you want. There are about 14 stops along the route and you can get off at any of them and join the bus the next time it comes by that way. Excellent value. The problem with the tour round Marseilles is that there aren't very many interesting places to stop, but the ride itself is worthwhile.

The ride begins at the Old Port. It's worth taking time to sit in a café for a while here, reading a book, watching the life around the waterside. The bus sticks to the road along the coast for the first while with good views from the upper deck. Then it heads inland heading up a very steep hill on top of which a Church, Notre Dame de la Garde, supports a statue of Mary and Jesus who are supposed to keep watch over the city below. Unfortunately the statues didn't make a very good job of it during the war.

The Church is probably the only stop worth getting out at, not for the sake of the edifice itself, but for the amazing view out over the city and the bay. The golden baby Jesus is of quite improbable dimensions. The representation of him and his mother is fairly repugnant and the Church rather tacky, but all the technical details can be had from the various notice boards, and visitors have ample opportunity of donating as many Euros as they please.

But the view. Out in the bay are the islands that can be visited by boat from the Old Port, but maybe it's worth getting a look at them from the hill top first. One of them is home to the prison made famous in Alexander Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, or was it the Man in the Iron Mask. Whichever. All that you see from the vantage point is fair food for a lively imagination. Spend as much time as you wish here and get the bus on back to the Old Port when you've done.

It's a lovely way to see Marseilles. One of the other advantages of this ride is that the passing traveler gets to be amazed at the oddness of so many strangely designed houses that have been squeezed onto the steep slope of the hill. You can fantasize about which one you'll buy to retire to.

Then there's the whole history of the place to get into as well. The running commentary brings the travelers up to speed on who held power and for how long right up to the present day. Loads of information on the war time Resistance, the destruction during the 39-45 war and the subsequent re-building.

It's a trip worth taking, and the Old Port will still be there when you get back, with the cafes, bars and restaurants to take care of the evening itinerary.

Years later, although hardly as well-travelled as Lord Mountbatten, I have my own treasured collection of atlases, maps and guides. All of them bring back memories, whether I've actually visited the places covered or not. Lord Louis' words, coupled with the maps of every kind and wealth of information that followed (how many 12 year-olds know that Nottingham means "estate of Snot"s people', or that the late, lamented Clackmannanshire had an area of 34,938 acres?), had begun a love affair with the cartographer's art which has grown stronger with time.

Perversely, perhaps, I gave up geography after two years at secondary school - there simply wasn't enough map work for my liking. As if to compensate, I now discovered the wonders of bus and train timetables. Give me The Atlas and the Midland Red Buses Complete Timetable, and I was in heaven. My mind's eye would follow the progress of double-deckers to all parts of central England, living out their journeys to Malvern Wells, Church Stretton, Norton-juxta-Twycross.... all this, of course, had to be kept from my family and friends or I'd have been subjected to some only-too-imaginable horrors:

“Well, Paul, I've come to the conclusion that you're suffering from Tabulated Information Obsession Syndrome, or, as we psychiatrists call it, madness.”

A couple of years later I took on a paper round to earn enough money for my first bicycle. My fellow paper-boy and best pal Gary had done the same thing - we both felt really cool as we paraded our gleaming new machines around the housing estates. Discontent soon began to set in, however, with the realisation that we never really went anywhere. The only actual journeys we seemed to make were from home to the paper shop.... to do the job.... to earn the money.... to pay for the bikes.... to get to the paper shop. I often wonder today, how many people are caught in a similar behavioural loop with their cars.

The Big Moment came with the discovery of the one-inch Ordnance Survey map. A whole new world opened up, with a previously undreamed-of capacity for detail on a sheet which fitted neatly into a pocket. The Birmingham A to Z, a mainstay of my life for years, was to a larger scale but could not compare with this. Thirty seconds after opening sheet 131 we'd learned that the railway which terminated at the Longbridge car factory had once continued to Halesowen, and that magnetic north was then 8½ degrees west of grid north. Not a lot of people knew that. Or, I would now concede, cared.

So we began to explore the locality and beyond. Perhaps the major appeal of a large-scale map to those fresh-faced young boys was its reliability - there really was an enormous reservoir beyond the next hill, and those woods ahead really did contain both deciduous trees and conifers. I later found that this "comfort factor" is not confined to terrestrial travel. One of my fondest memories of the Apollo moon landings is of an astronaut exulting, “Hey - look at that crater coming up, right where it's supposed to be!” Boy, could I relate to that!

Then, in 1974, the 1:50,000 series came along. Initial resentment of yet another aspect of life going metric soon gave way to a grudging appreciation of the improvement in clarity and detail. All right, so the contours - the lines showing height above sea level, from which an idea of the shape and steepness of hills and valleys can be gained - did look odd. The old 50-foot ones had simply been converted to the nearest metre, resulting in convenient heights like 213, 381 and 533m. And no longer were both deciduous and coniferous trees shown. But overall, it was a change for the better. An idea came to me. The Large Scale Map As Art.

I was making a coffee table at night school, using solid mahogany (sorry, rain forests - if only I'd known). One day I was browsing through the atlas collection when I suddenly noticed that the Island of Arran is coffee table shaped. A flat version of sheet 69 was soon on its way from the Ordnance Survey's head office in Southampton, and as the ravages of the Post Office's Bending Department (Cylindrical Packages Marked "Do Not Bend" Section) weren't too serious, it formed a colourful adornment to said table. I patiently endured the inevitable comments about it being an interesting idea for a picnic table but wasn't it a bit heavy to take all the way to Arran?

It should be added that this island is one of the places I have yet to visit. The sight of it in the atlas had unleashed a childhood memory - a treasure hunt in a dimly-recalled comic, featuring Lady Penelope of Thunderbirds fame. (All these titled folk..... thankfully, an appreciation of maps is all I have in common with the upper classes!) I forget whether Her Ladyship found the treasure - I must have missed the final episode - but she and Parker had a lot of fun looking for it.

By now I had gained a wife, who alas merited the description "long-suffering" before our first anniversary. Every country walk we embarked upon seemed to be in areas where recent rainfall had broken all records, on one occasion producing the bitter comment “Your precious maps show everything but the mud.”

Needless to say, she does not share my enthusiasm for the map makers and all their works. Neither do our three children, despite my efforts at giving them a proper education. Fortunately they all appreciate the countryside to some extent, and we often go exploring. The whole family has to admit that, with the help of the appropriate maps (without which I nowadays have severe palpitations when going almost anywhere), we've found some pretty interesting - and uncrowded - places to visit.

Because the greatest appeal maps have to me is the insight they give. Thanks to them, we've enjoyed places which no-one equipped only with a road atlas would even know existed. For us, the ultimate example of this is the beach at Talisker Bay, Isle of Skye.

Atlases show an extremely minor road ending well short of the coast - apparently not worth a second glance. A map to a respectable scale, however, reveals to the west a small river plain enclosed to the north, south and east by dramatic slopes, with a waterfall descending a cliff and a beach facing the Western Isles. An easy 15-minute walk from your car or bike and you've found Paradise (weather permitting, as always in Skye.) If you visit Talisker Bay and are lucky enough to be rewarded with a classic Hebridean sunset, you will, like us, bless the world's cartographers for the rest of your days.

1. Before World War I, the film star W.C. Fields spent a season as a juggler in the Tower Circus.
2. In 1985 Escapologist Karl Bartoni and his fiancée, were married in a cage suspended from the top of the Tower.
3. The top of the Tower stays open until the wind speed reaches 45mph and then it's considered too dangerous for the public to visit the viewing platform.
4. The height to the top of the Tower's flagpole is 518ft 9 inches, which is roughly the height of 39 London Double Decker buses stacked on top of each another.
5. Between 1913 and 1946 the Tower's telephone number was "Blackpool 1".
6. During the world famous " Blackpool Illuminations" 10,000 lights are used to illuminate the Tower.
7. The "Walk of Faith" glass floor panel at the top of the Tower was opened in 1998. The laminated glass is 2 inches thick and can withstand the equivalent weight of five baby elephants
8. At the base of the Tower buried beneath the foundation stone, there's a time capsule from 1891
9. Unusually the circus is positioned at the base of the Tower between the four legs of the structure.
10. The Tower buildings contain over 5 million bricks and it takes over 15,000 yards of carpet to cover the floor area.

There was no StarPlus with its sans's and bahus, no ESPN with guys continuously running between wickets in some country trying to beat some other country, no nothing. Only Doordarshan. So the younger ones saw cartoons, documentaries on Nehru , punctuated with " Amchi Mati Amchi Mansa" the program with the highest farmer TRP's. The kids would draw a card at home, attentively color it till the pencil pierced through the paper; never mind.... ; it was given and accepted with much grace and appreciation . If you had a garden, you plucked a flower, and clutching it as if it was gold, took it to school, to present it to your class teacher. Paanch rupaiyya, ek phool was blasphemy.

Once folks got a whiff of the impending globalization, we were suddenly subject to an onslaught of Mothers, Fathers and Valentines Day. Not to speak of Friendship Day. Shopkeepers , whose limit of ambition had reached up to selling Maggie Noodles, suddenly started stocking, satin ribbons to be sold by the metre, for Friendship day. Nine shining inches of a silky ribbon , when tied on the hands of someone , you probably met only when you wanted some class notes, signified eternal friendship !

Just in case your interest waned, or you appeared to be responding to your parents suggestion of not wasting money on such things, the TV channels ensured that you did the stuff , lest you be branded a kaku type...(unfortunate name, that).

I thought time had come to define certain indigenous days , more in keeping with our Desi ethos.

BNBC: Be Nice to the Bus Conductor Day

My eternal tribute to the BEST bus service of Mumbai. the buses may creak, rock, rattle, the driver may do the same, but the bus takes you from A to B, while the conductor exhibits an uncanny ability to slither through a packed bus from back to front, without outraging anyone (or anyones modesty). (Suggested activities : carry exact change, share a chocolate/chikki with the conductor, get up when he tells you to vacate a ladies' seat (without an argument or frown). Say Thank you to the driver and conductor when you get off. Ram-Ram is even better. See how he goes into first gear with new vigor on the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Rd.

HRD: Hamara Rasta Day

Please note that HRD has no connection AT ALL with a ministry of the same name. On this one day, folks should desist from saying "Kya ye aap ke baap ka rasta hai ?". (Suggested activities : take a detour around the bhajiwalla, instead of leaping close to the tomatoes; shake your head instead of mouthing something bad; exchange high-fives with the vadawallah after you politely move aside to let a truck pass a foot away from the stall.)

HD: Hornless Day

There are a variety of ways one can observe this. Keep your vehicle at home and walk. Be creative in communication through your vehicle window, if you are forced to use the vehicle at all. Glaring at a taxi driver and saying "dikhta nahi kya ?" does NOT earn you any points.... Drive at a sedate pace, so others are forced to drive the same way. Enjoy the scenery, the trafficjams, the dug up roads, the wandering bovine population looking for a relic of the past - a blade of green grass....

L+ Security day

This will be ONE day on which the X, Y, and Z security types are left to themselves. The several jeeps, constables, inspectors, lights on vehicles and sirens can be put to much better use. And L+ will be a day dedicated to the Ladies Security . Remember Chivalry ? Well, Let the ladies get into the bus ahead of you. If you see someone pretending to be thinner than he is, and trying to squeeze through to the front of the bus through a congregation of ladies, make him remember his "nani", a super L+ lady. If you are traveling at night in the suburban train, travel after 7:30pm in the ladies dabba, not because its allowed, but beacuse the few ladies who travel late may feel they have someone to help them. If you see guys whizzing past on cycles and motorcycles dangerously close to ladies with glistening long mangalsutras, take a diving leap to stop the thieves, in a manner that Moammed Kaif would approve ....

BBD: BhajiwaliBai Day

Avoid the Bhajiwalla Bhaiyyas (BB) on this day. Buy your vegetables only from the bahji ladies on this day. Notice how you get more of bhaji, suddenly. Say Mavshibai, and ask her where her hometown is. Comment on how smart her son is (who is arranging the lemons artistically), and pretend NOT to notice as she adds ONE more sheaf of Kothmeer in your bag.

ID: Immobile Day

Leave your mobile at home, along with the hands free kit. All those who think you are mad when they see you talking and laughing with yourself on the road, will be reassured. Music in the cacophony of buses is sometimes OK; but have you heard a Sonata in 392 Major, where "Saare jahan se achcha", "just chill chill" and "kajra Re" continuously play while you are trying to shout the name of the bus stop to the conductor ? And sometimes everyone speaks so loudly on the phone, that you wonder why the require a phone at all; just holler. All Talk time is permanently free.

Class 7 day (C7D)

The immediate consequence of everyone getting hyper about classes 10 and 12 is that once the children go to class 8, parents get into PUSH Mode. Free time from 5 am to 8 am ? No Problem. Join a class. Last years highest was 99.9. Its always "WE mange More" (and I am not talking about the selection committee for cricket). Study, Study, beat your buddy, you must get 99.9999. On the occasion of C7D, take the children on an excursion somewhere. Honor the sports kids in your school. Applaud the artists and admire their art work and performances. Have some non-engineers, non-doctors, and some such , come and chat with the kids on what they do. Get your kids to visit an institute for differently-enabled special kids. Play cricket with them . Life consists of SO many things other than Engineers, doctors, computer scientists, and managers....

LTD: Local Train Day

They are the Lifeline. While we cling in doorways, squeeze into compartments, specialize in saying "zara sarkoon ghya " (just push that side a bit...), so one more can lay claim to 36 square inches of plywood , day after day, month after month, the motorman simply follows the Bhagwad Gita ; he continues to do his work, without expectation of any reward. Instead, whenever there is a train strike, and some senseless people take their anger out on trains, these guys get beaten up. NO one, and i repeat , no one, ever, waves , smiles, and says thank you to them, when they stand taking a breather at the terminus , in the doorway of their train cabin, waiting for the next signal to fall. So, on an LTD, meet your motorman, wish him well, introduce your children to him, and tell him you admire his difficult job. If he has an off period, have an impromptu chai with him along with the people in the railway dabba.