2004 saw a return of the traveler

If I were Bridget Jones, my 2004 travel diary might read something like this:

Number of airport security pat-downs: Three, all discreet and all random. All were in the somewhat humiliating arms-out-to-sides position and were conducted by women wielding metal detectors; one used the back of her hands. (In response to complaints, the Transportation Security Administration this month said it would allow passengers to put their arms down once their upper bodies had been searched.)

Hours spent waiting in security check lines: Fewer than in other years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks changed the security procedures. Some of the longest: at LAX.

Number of handbag searches: Many. Most recently, an inspector at Toronto International Airport became agitated about a bottle of contact lens saline solution. Interestingly, on another trip I had forgotten to transfer a pair of manicure scissors into my checked luggage and it sailed through X-ray undetected.

All in all, flying -- indeed, travel -- seemed a bit less of a hassle. I think of this as a return to normality, albeit a new normality. The travelers have returned. The annual report of the Travel Industry Assn. of America called 2004 “the year of recovery the travel industry [had] been waiting for,” with increased demand in all travel industry sectors. And it predicts continued gains in 2005.

Removing one’s jacket and extracting one’s laptop from its case have become as automatic to frequent fliers as remembering not to lock their luggage. This means shorter waits for security.

With travelers well-schooled in the drill, check-in and security-point times seem to have shrunk somewhat, and on more than one occasion I found myself killing time after having allotted the airlines’ suggested 90 minutes or more to be processed for international flights. (I can’t say I had this experience at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal. The longest lines I encountered all year were in August for a Northwest Airlines flight to Tokyo)

Cruise passengers also seem to understand that security comes first. As a passenger on the Queen Mary 2’s inaugural Caribbean cruise in February, I was issued an identification card and required to show it and pass through a metal detector when leaving and re-boarding the ship at its ports of call. That’s standard operating procedure these days.

Indeed, I’ve grown so accustomed to this sort of thing that I was only mildly surprised, on checking into the Courtyard by Marriott Paris Charles de Gaulle hotel in July, to be asked to pass through a metal detector at the door. Fortunately, this was a one-off situation. Members of the Athens 2004 Olympic Torch Relay would be arriving momentarily, with torch, for an overnight stay.

For stories published in The Times in 2004, I traveled to Austin, Texas; Crete, Greece; Tokyo; Deadwood, S.D.; St. Augustine, Fla., and the state’s Gold Coast before boarding the Queen Mary 2. I also visited Athens, Canada and Scotland, among other places.

I didn’t love every destination, but I loved every adventure. The voyage on the Queen Mary 2 -- with ports of call including San Juan, Puerto Rico; Dominica; and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands -- was a mixed bag. It is a beautiful ship, but the kinks had yet to be worked out on this, its second sailing. Food was uneven, service less than impeccable. The staterooms are lovely, but a buy-your-own Champagne party for the sail-away from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was a jarring note, as was the Wish-Bone salad dressing served from the bottle in the King’s Court, the ship’s cafeteria-style restaurant. By now, the ship may have attained the elegance it deserves. I hope so.

On the plus side, we were a star attraction as we docked at Caribbean ports. Helicopters came out to greet us. Passengers on cruise ships lined up at the rails to gawk. Onshore, we were entertained by costumed dancers and offered rum punches. The Queen Mary 2 is big -- the biggest ocean liner ever built (as opposed to a cruise ship) -- and sleek, and standing on one of its upper decks, one did feel a bit superior.

Watching a cruise ship glide by, one of our crew remarked, “That’s not a ship. That’s a block of flats.” I recall the day our Queen returned a whistle salute from a cruise ship with a blast of its mighty whistle, prompting a woman among our fellow passengers to yell, “Take that!”

Silliness and kindness

Probably the silliest thing I did all year was to spend several hours on a May evening sitting with several hundred others in the shadow of the Congress Avenue Bridge in downtown Austin hoping for a massive bat-sighting.

Austin loves its Mexican free-tailed bats, which arrive in mid-March, nest under the bridge, breed profligately and then fly home to Mexico in November. Part of their charm is that during their stay they gobble up about 30,000 pounds of insects. I can’t describe a Mexican free-tailed bat because by the time they flew out on their nightly food-foraging mission it was so dark that I saw nothing but a gray blur overhead. What, I wondered, was all the fuss about?

One of the lovelier surprises of travel is the random act of kindness. I won’t forget the hotel clerk in Chania, Crete, who came to my rescue. I’d just spent a harrowing hour driving a stick-shift rental car through the town’s narrow streets, many auto-free, trying in vain to find the one that would take me to my hotel.

Finally, I parked the car in a public lot and walked to the hotel. Perhaps it was my sad story or just one look at this frazzled tourist that prompted the young woman on duty to call an off-duty colleague and ask him to get on his motorbike and meet me at the lot where I had left the car. He did, and he not only led me to the hotel but schlepped my bags the 49 steps up to my room.

It had been many years since I’d been to Crete, and I was surprised at the changes mass tourism has made along the north coast, where you’ll find the three major visitor destinations--Heraklion, Chania and Rethymnon. That’s where I went; I had mapped out only four days on the island, but I would advise visitors to explore the less-trammeled south shore (after they’ve seen the reconstructed Minoan palace at Knossos, near Heraklion).

Tokyo, which I visited for the first time in August, was daunting and fascinating. On a rainy day at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine, I stumbled on a traditional Shinto wedding procession, the bride in an elaborate white kimono. Another day, a friend took me to Tsukiji market, the world’s largest fish market. I wouldn’t have thought a fish market would grab me, but this one is something else: vendors at 1,600 booths selling sea creatures I hadn’t even known existed.

A Japanese ryokan, or traditional hotel, is something any visitor to that country should experience, even though sleeping on a futon on the floor with a block of grain husks for a pillow may not be most Westerners’ idea of ultimate comfort.

Fountain of Youth park

I also visited Deadwood, S.D., which was enjoying the celebrity that has come with the HBO series “Deadwood.” The show was the biggest thing to happen to Deadwood since the return of legalized gambling in 1989. That is, if you don’t count Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane who, at her request, are buried side by side in the town’s Mt. Moriah Cemetery. Not a turn of events that would have pleased Wild Bill, who had married a rich widow and had no romantic interest in Jane. As an exhibit at Deadwood’s Adams Museum noted, Calamity Jane “accumulated an undetermined number of husbands and perhaps children but never Wild Bill.”

For another 2004 story, I spent a few days in St. Augustine, Fla., where -- to my horror -- I found myself buying a ticket to the hokey and privately owned Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park. I even drank some of the water, which is heavy on the sulfur and smells like rotten eggs but tastes OK. Our guide, who drinks it, swore he was 126 years old.

Before boarding the Queen Mary 2 in Fort Lauderdale, I drove along Florida’s Gold Coast on the Atlantic side of South Florida, stopping at the grand hotels and mansions built in Florida’s pre-Depression Gilded Age and now beautifully restored. If you want trendy, this isn’t it, but the oh-so-hip Art Deco hotels of Miami’s South Beach have neither great lore nor Baccarat chandeliers.

The stories of the men who built the grand monuments to themselves abound. I was intrigued with Addison Mizner, an eccentric who created what’s now the Boca Raton Resort & Club. A primate fancier, he regularly strolled the manicured grounds in his pajamas, a macaw on one shoulder, a monkey on the other.

These hotels--Boca Raton, the Breakers in Palm Beach, the Biltmore in Coral Gables -- once hosted the creme de la creme, but today they throw their doors open to badge-wearing convention groups, which alters the ambience somewhat.

It was on this trip to Florida that I first encountered a new wrinkle in hotel bill add-ons. At Boca Raton, a $9 daily service charge was added to my bill, even though the staff readily accepted tips. More annoyingly, the Biltmore billed me $7 a day for use of the fitness center and telephone. When I protested that I’d used neither, the charge was removed.

Airlines also seem to be finding new ways to nickel-and-dime travelers. Booking a flight from LAX to Quebec City in November, I asked for an aisle seat in coach but was told by the Air Canada rep that, because I’d booked a value-focused “Tango” fare, it would cost me $7 extra to reserve a seat.

Favorite destination

When I told friends I was going to Athens in March to do a pre-Olympics story, some expressed concern for my safety. But never in the week I spent there did I feel ill at ease. I did feel a little shock at the price of things. When I’d last visited Athens in the ‘80s, it was considered one of the “good value” countries. This time, hotels and tour operators were raising prices to cash in on the Olympics.

My guide in Athens seemed surprised when I asked him about the potential for terrorist attacks during the Games. He just shook his head and said that those who expected violence didn’t understand the relationship between Greece -- a strong supporter of the Arab world and the Palestinian cause and a country with widespread anti-American feelings -- and its Middle Eastern neighbors.

When my story on Athens appeared in mid-April, it painted a picture of the Olympics city as one vast construction site. I was skeptical that Athens would be able to pull off the Games four months later, and the International Olympics Committee was expressing the same concerns. But Athenians I interviewed, including a press ministry official, insisted that the Greeks were just doing things the Greek way -- at the last minute -- and that it would be a good Games. It was.

In early December, I flew to Quebec City, where the first real snowfall of the season turned the cobbled streets and stone houses of the Old Town into a Currier & Ives Christmas card. I was there to preview Quebec Fete Noel, the charming celebration in the Old Town.

Perhaps my favorite destination in 2004 was Scotland, which I’d never visited until July. My assignment was to distillery-hop through the Inner Hebrides, the islands off the west coast that produce much of Scotland’s single malt whiskies, a distinctly acquired taste that I haven’t acquired. But I loved seeing it made, and I can still conjure up the smell of yeast and smoked peat.

The people were a delight, although I did have a bit of trouble understanding them. And I drove for miles on country roads that I shared only with cattle and black-faced sheep. I could have done without some of those roads. It was my first encounter with “single tracks,” narrow, winding one-lane roads that carry two-way traffic. Terrifying.

I’ve received my marching orders for 2005 and it promises to be an exciting and challenging year. But meanwhile, 2004 was a very good year in which “normal” was an accolade. After 9/11, who would ever have dreamed that?

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Highs and lows

Best moment

Zipping around Tokyo with my Japanese friend Kenji Sase, who lived with us while he was a student in Los Angeles. He showed me wondrous places and took care of the language and the currency conversion.

Worst moment

A night spent encased in a plastic tube at the Capsule Hotel Fontaine Akasaka in Tokyo. What can I say? My editor made me do it.

Favorite hotels

Auberge Saint-Antoine, 8 Rue Saint-Antoine in Quebec City’s Old Town. A small hotel with panache, blending contemporary chic and Quebecois history. Published rates start at $130. (888) 692-2211, www.saint-antoine.com.

Park Hyatt Tokyo, 3-7-1-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku. Expensive and worth it. Published rates start at $485. Serene and understated, with impeccable and discreet service, large rooms and great views. 011-81-3-3288-1234, www.tokyo.hyatt.com.

The Howard, 34 Great King St., Edinburgh, Scotland; 011-44-131-557-3500, www.thehoward.com. A truly elegant small luxury hotel in a Georgian mansion. Published rates for doubles start at $350, including a full Scottish breakfast that precludes any need for lunch.

Favorite restaurants

Little Waimea on Hawaii’s Big Island has become a dining destination, with Merriman’s and the also very good, very atmospheric, Daniel Thiebaut. On the basis of one dinner at each, I’d give the nod to the regional cuisine at Merriman’s in Opelo Plaza, Highway 19 and Opelo Road, (808) 885-6822, www.merrimanshawaii.com. Nice people too. I left my umbrella and they sent it to me at no charge.

While I was in Quebec City, I had two memorable dinners. One was at L’Utopie, which opened in April at 226 1/2 Rue Saint-Joseph in the newly gentrified Saint-Roch area; (418) 523-7878, www.restaurant-utopie.com. Fine food, beautifully presented in a smart space. The other was at Toast!, an intimate stone-walled restaurant with fireplace in Le Priori Hotel, 17 Rue du Sault-au-Matelot in the Vieux-Port; (418) 692-1334, www.hotellepriori.com. There’s a terrace for summer dining.

New travel discovery

This may sound strange, but it’s Land O’Lakes single-serve half-and-half, sold in a box of 144 at Smart & Final for about $6. I love the convenience -- not to mention the savings -- of in-room coffeemakers, but I can’t abide powdered fake cream. I just pack my little Land O’Lakes creamers in a sturdy box -- they need no refrigeration -- and tuck them in my suitcase. I find hotel room coffee too weak, so I also pack single-serve coffee bags to give it a boost. With a bagel or roll from a bakery, that’s breakfast.

-- Beverly Beyette