As the Dawn Princess slowly makes it’s way to India, via Singapore and Kuala Lumpar, I’ve been spending my days lounging on the Promenade Deck reading about another woman’s journey to India by sea.

The Original Letters from India by Eliza Fay paints quite a different picture of ocean life than the one I am living at the moment.

 On the Dawn Princess, there is no lack of food, lack of service, or lack of entertainment. The most difficult decision that needs to be made every day is where and when to eat and whether to sit and read or go to the gym.

This, of course, wasn’t the case for Eliza Fay. Her journey, by land and sea, was fraught with complications, imprisonment, near ship wrecks, and very little comfort. But as her letters reflect, it was never dull or uninteresting. 

Little is known about Eliza Fay’s early life, apart from the fact that she was born in South London in 1756 and her father was mostly likely a sailor.

All we really know of her life is what happened after her marriage to Irish lawyer Anthony Fay when she was in her early twenties. In 1779 the  newlyweds embarked on a haphazard journey to a new life in Calcutta, a journey that Eliza recorded through a series of letters that she sent to her family in England.

And what letters they were. Long and rambling, more like journal entries than letters, they are often hard to read due to their lack of structure. But it’s this very lack of structure – unguarded and uncensored – that make them so fascinating. Here is a woman, with limited education, who is living an adventure that would have most of us shaking in our shoes.

The collection was first published in 1817 and provides an unguarded and uncensored glimpse of their perilous adventures by land and sea across Europe and the Middle East to India.

In long, winding, letters, Eliza Fay offers up frank opinions and descriptions of those she meets, both favourable and unfavourable. No one and nothing is spared except maybe Eliza herself who she obviously sees as the stoic heroine who survives one misadventure after another.

But perhaps Simon Winchester, in his introduction in the edition put out by the New York Review Books, descirbes Eliza’s letters best when he writes that

“No calmer correspondent can be imagined than the magnificent Mrs Fay, for whom the words imperturbable, indomitable, and redoubtable might have been coined”

As the first port of call on the Dawn Princess World Cruise, Darwin, Australia was a sight for sore eyes after 5 days at sea. Don’t get me wrong – it was smooth sailing along the way, with great views of the east Australian coastline as we travelled north from Sydney. But as a confined land lover, I was happy to get my feet firmly back on terra firma.

As soon as the Dawn Princess docked, I was ready to head down the gangplank and check out Darwin, a place that has been on my travel bucket wish list as long as I can remember.

But here’s the dilemma that cruise travel creates. You travel to interesting and exotic places but once there, your time is limited. After all, how much can you actually see of a new place in eight hours?.

Mulling over this question, I head first for the information center to gather up some brochures and a map, and then make my way to the Roma Bar, a café recommended not only for it’s good coffee but also, it’s free wireless internet.

An hour later, I’ve had my caffeine fix and managed to put a couple of locals on the spot by asking them ‘what is the one thing they recommend as a must see for visitors with limited time?’

Their response, after a few minutes of head scratching, was the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, home to Sweetheart, the Northern Territory’s icon crocodile that gain notoriety in the 1970’s by attacking a number of aluminium dinghies at a popular Darwin fishing spot. Caught, and accidentally drowned in 1979, Sweetheart has now taken up pride of place in the museum. Of course, there is more to the museum than just a stuffed crocodile. For example, there’s the Cyclone Tracy exhibition that highlights the almost total destruction of Darwin in 1974, plus a number of indigenous art and history exhibits.But the Museum & Art Galley of the Northern Territory is located outside the immediate city center, and so, reluctantly, I crossed it off the list.

Instead, I decided to head underground and check out old World War II Oil Storage Tunnels just a couple of hundred yards from where the Dawn Princess was docked.

Given that I’m not keen on tunnels, caves, or any enclosed spaces, this was something of a nerve-wracking event. But sometimes you just have to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. And I’m sure glad I did.

Following the bombing  of the fuel oil storage tanks on Darwin’s waterfront on Stokes Hill by the Japanese on 19 February 1942, the Australian government ordered the Civil Construction Corps to build some underground tunnels. These tunnels were designed to protect Darwin’s supply of fuel and oil from any further bombardment by the Japanese. As a result, the a large area underneath Darwin has been transformed into an amazing series of tunnels. Most of the tunnels are closed to the public, but tunnels 5 and 6, located alongside Kitchener Drive on the waterfront, has been restored and turned into a tourist attraction.

After listening to an informative overview of the tunnels from Tony, the enthusiastic tour guide on duty, I followed the others into the tunnels. It was like steeping into a bygone time.

Dark, damp, and dingy, the tunnels really highlight the fear that Darwin had that they would be bombed again. But they also highlighted my own fears of enclosed spaces. While others lingered at each stop, I must admit I focused more on my breathing and the lights at the end of tunnel than the actual tunnel. But along the way, I did manage to check out the fascinating photographic display featuring the men and women who served to protect Australia during WWII.

Some of the world’s best travel writers are songwriters.

I’m not talking about those who’ve written famous or not so famous road songs — though I expect that’s a topic which will come up in conversation here in future. Rather I’m thinking of those who do what travel stories, essays, and books do: evoke a sense of place, stir curiosity about it, recall memories, suggest that there is more explore. The musicians who do this best, as with the prose writers who do this best, often are not setting out to write about travel, or at least, not the kind which involves physical geography.

Cathie Ryan begins with just a few elements in the title track of her album The Farthest Wave. A waterside, a sun going down, a woman sorting through things in her mind. — it could be anywhere, and in the way of good songs, if you take it in, make your own, it will suit your landscape. With a word choice here and there, an indirect reference to an ancient legend, spare notes from guitar and bouzouki in the background, and at the right moment a fiddle which speaks as eloquently as the singer does, it is a song which very powerfully evokes and invokes Ireland, though. Not the Ireland of fast flying jigs and clinking glasses nor the one of light as gossamer new age sounds, but an Ireland that is stronger and older than all that, and at the same time very much of the present day. With much more yet to explore.

Carrie Newcomer makes her way from the Popcorn Fair in Versailles to the Mennonite Relief Quilt Sale and through several dozen other county fairs in her song I Wish I May I Wish I Might. A native Hoosier, she laces an intricately woven string of real Indiana place and fair names, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, with just enough narrative, memory, and gentle humor to recall Dogwood Days, or the Maple Syrup Fest, or the sound, smell and taste of another fair that lives in your memory. The turn of a moment’s time is an idea which runs through her album Before & After, on which this song appears. Newcomer evokes a kaleidoscope of fair going moments in her song, more than enough to suggest a return visit might be in order, if, perhaps, only in memory.

Ryan and Newcomer both invite the listener to share a journey, to explore, to remember, to create a new memory, to dream a dream. Did they each set out to write about travel? Journeys of heart and spirit, more likely. But place speaks clearly in their work as well.

photographs copyright Kerry Dexter

An innocent cup of late-afternoon tea is all I wanted, and all I expected. After vowing to skip lunch after an unplanned gorging that morning, a quiet cup of English Breakfast sounded divine; it sounded calorie-free.

But Spring High Tea at The Table Bay, Cape Town’s five-star Victorian darling on the V&A Waterfront and one of the Leading Hotels in the World, is a much more decadent affair than a simple cup of Dilmah’s; this, friends, is a gourmet three-course feast.

It begins, rapturously, with warm, buttery mini-quiches. Crumbly, delicate, filled with minced mushrooms, spinach, and feta. Yum. The standout (according to my non-vegetarian girlfriend) is the bacon, egg, and gruyere mix. Small sandwiches, including a smoked salmon wrap, round out the first course.

(At this point, I’m already stealing furtive glances at the dessert buffet, a temptuous spread of artfully presented cakes, pies, eclairs, and white chocolate pyramids. I really, really should have had a lighter breakfast.)

The second course arrives and we make quick work of the whole-wheat and raisin scones, still steaming as we break them in half and smother them with fresh lemon curd and cream. In my only show of caloric restraint today, I resist the urge to eat the rest of the curd with a spoon, like pudding.

Finally, the third course, or what our friendly server called “the best part.” Willy Wonka himself couldn’t concoct a dreamier spread of sweets: baked chocolate chip cheesecake, dark chocolate chiffon cake, chocolate eclair, fruit pavlova, rum baba soaked in rum, coconute chocolate sponge cake with ripples of apricot brandy, rice pudding, white chocolate cake slathered in, yes, real white chocolate.

I’m assured that the beauty of it all is that everything is calorie-free; I choose to believe it, pile my plate full, and vow that tomorrow I’ll skip breakfast.

Spring High Tea is served daily from 2:30 – 5:30pm at The Table Bay’s Lounge. The full three-course spread is 160 Rand per person; an extra 20 Rand gets you a glass of sparkling white wine. The Sinful Delight option, at 80 Rand, includes just the tea and desserts.

Photo Copyright Brian Spencer

As a former Florida resident for a few years, and a big fan of not only the unique attractions of the interior but also the gorgeous Gulf side beaches, I’m taking a great interest in the impact of the BP oil spill disaster.

Nothing significant has happened quite yet to Florida (unlike coastal Louisiana) but even the threat of tar balls has knocked the sugar-sand Panhandle beaches off of Dr. Beach’s annual best beaches list.

Since there are already signs of a tourism drop-off….the best time to snag amazing deals, you travelers, even though it feels vulture-like….and President Obama is urging travel to the Gulf Coast beaches, the crisis communications response has begun.

The Visit Florida tourism organization (a pretty effective machine even without hurricanes and other disasters!) is harnessing the power of webcams, photos and live Twitter reports from humans on a new website page; it’s called Florida Live.

Rather than sticking their heads in the sand about tourists avoiding the coast for fear of oil spill problems, they’re trying to gather eyewitness reports (particularly from beach areas) and make them easily searchable and accessible, so that people can see coastal destinations and make their own travel decisions.

In addition to graphics, there is a link to the Deepwater Horizon response team at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, plus links to specific tourism organizations like CVBs (Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus) across all of the regions in the state.

Visitors want to see for themselves. Florida is trying to make it easy for them.

Travelers, go if you can, but use the tools available to check the situation first. You can also follow @VisitFlorida on Twitter.