WONDERFUL TRAVELLING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20722, 15 November 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

WONDERFUL TRAVELLING

ALL ROUND THE WORLD. MAN'S ELEVEN TRIPS. GIRL'S ONE HOUR IN LONDON. Two extraordinary travel stories were told in the Daily Mail, a few weeks ago. One was narrated by Miss Nina Shea, a wealthy young American from Boston, Massachusetts, who left London early one morning for Paris. She spent rather less than 70 hours in England and Fiance when she sailed from Havre for New York. And it was her first visit to

Europe. The othei traveller is Mr. Julius Bn'ttlebank, also an American, who described the. things he has seen in eleven trips round the world, and who finds that, London of all the places he lias visited has changed most.

Mr. Brittlebank is a man turned 70, with a weather-tanned lace and silvery hair, and, seated in his room in a London hotel, he talked to a reporter %vith as much zest as lie travels. "Yes, sir!" he started, giving h'mself a cracking slap on the knee, " I im just about to conclude my eleventh trip round this little world. For the last *'o years I have been travelling around seeing things, and I mean to go on going round until I die. x. £20,000 Spent, on Travelling, " Travel—that's my hobby. I reckon I have spent £20.030 on it. That's my pleasure in life. My travelling days began 65 years ago, when my mother took me from our home in the Middle West to Virginia—a thousand miles. " I travelled in America whenever I could until I was .'SO, when I made my first trip across the Atlantic. There was something in crossing the Atlantic in those days. You knew you were «>ii the ocean, and riot in a floating hotel. Four passengers in a cabin together, and a bathroom between the lot of you if y<vu were lucky." Mr. Brittlebank was in Constantinople in 1899 and saw Abdul Hamid surrounded by 25,000 of his troops, outside his palace on the Bosphorus, a.nd on his way to the mosque with the members, of his harem riding in Parisian carriages behind him. In 1904, Mr. Brittlebank was in Russia, just in time for the Russo-Japanese War, and saw the rush and bustle of mobilisation and the sailing of the Russian fleet to destruction. In 1911 he was in Delhi where, by another wonderful piece of luck, he arrived in time for the great Durbar. " Marvellous show, that!" he exclaimed. Link with the Conqueror. "When the Great War hroko out the globe-trotter was in Hamburg, and watched masses of German troops mustering. " Well!" he went on, " and here I am in London again. But what have they done witfi the old city ? London is giving me more shocks than I've ever had in going round and round the world. I've been in the habit of staying at the Hotel Cecil almost ever since It was built; and when I come to etay in it now, what do I find I A. heap of dusfr and rubble!

"And who is it that's knocking down Park Lane ? is iit that's got a dislike of the old mansions? I tell you there's more change going on in London than I've seen anywhere else in the world." Mr. Briltlebank loves London—and all England. For, ho proudly declares, he is sprung from the Brittlebanks of Derbyshire. And on his mother's side, he says, he is descended from a standard bearer to William the Conqueror. A Girl's Drcwdei Day. Miss Shea arrived at Waterloo Station at 5.35 p.m. on September 19. A motorcar was waiting for .her, and before six o'clock she had visited two shops. " Between six and seven o'clock —still with my luggage—l made a fairly thorough tour of London," Miss Shell said, " and saw all the important buildings—from the outside. Then I went to my hotel and chauj{ed, I decided to havo half my dinner before going to a theatre and to finish it in another restaurant afterward. It was very successful. I didn't get to bed until nearly one o'clock, hut I was up at 7.30, and left an hour later by car for Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon. I was back in London bv six.

" There was another play I particularly wanted to see, and I also wanted to see a real English music-hall. The only thing was to go to the first house of the music-hall and. then to the plav. "Dinner? Well, I did have to miss dinner, but I enjoyed my supper afterward. It is fun coming 6000 miles for one day in England, but naturally I should be spending longer here if I were able."

Early the next morning Miss Shea's car was waiting to take her to Croydon aero- . drome on her way to Paris. "If you really hurjry," she said to the driver, " you will just have time to let me sea the inside of Westminster Cathedral on my way. Good-bve, London!"