It’s the diversity of places, people and cultures that I came across on this trip that I will never forget. Not only are there differences between countries, but there are dramatic changes within countries. The landscape in the French region of Provence can change from stone and rock, reflected in the rugged hill village of Gordes, to the ochre colours of Roussillon that is only a half hour drive away. Or there was the time I had to ask the shopowner in Liverpool to repeat what he said three times because I thought he was talking a different language. It’s that diversity that makes for a far richer experience. That’s something that should be cherished.

Our agents have been roving the earth to bring you back only the best painted concrete chimp sculptures money can buy. This exquisite example of Mexican craftmanship cast in the workshops of Rosarito Beach would be a perfect companion for the three-tier black marble Romanesque water feature.

You too can have all that is Rosarito Beach - the surf, the tourist markets, the bars, and the tourists - just by ordering your very own concrete chimp. Our operators are standing by the phone waiting for your call. Call now! Call more than once and get a matching pair for the price of two!

I even suffered a lag when crossing into a neighbouring country. The brain seemed to lag behind the rest of the body and was stuck in the previous country’s language to the point that I had to run through Italian, English before being able to say “Oui” to the simplest of questions. It wasn’t only me that my brain was bamboozling: the waitress in a French cafe ended up farewelling me with Arrivederci.

There ended up quite a few countries that my brain had to keep with. Now that it’s over I can start to give some of the statistics for the trip. I ended up walking through 10 countries. I admit Vatican City and Monaco aren’t the biggest countries to traverse, but they both have their own post offices!

For the first time in eight weeks last night I went to the gym, and I am feeling every bit of it. The weights were heavier and the distances on the treadmill seemed farther than when I last used the machines. Despite all the walking I did in Europe, and I wore through a few of pairs of socks in my travels, it obviously wasn’t enough to stop losing sight of my fitness. Even the effort of lugging a backpack, weighed down with a library of guidebooks, pamphlets and brochures wasn’t enough to stop the muscles from going AWOL. It looks like it is back to boot camp.

Saying that, while travelling shows the new and the different, it also highlights what you miss. For me, it’s been the family and friends back home, and Australia’s beaches!

It was the newest ride, The Twilight Zone’s Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror that cracked me up. This state-of-the-art ride shot its passengers in a lift up a few floors, then let the lift freefall for a few floors, only to be catapaulted up into the air and dropped again. It was ridiculous, but it was fun. There is a sense of the ridiculous throughout Disneyland to the point that it is hard to know what is real. There cannot be too many places where patrons can reasonably question whether the flowers in the flower beds were real (In this case they were)

It is a little hard to know what is real in southern California too. There cannot be too many places in the world that have been able to transform desert into an oasis where rich green lawns, large stands of eucalyptus trees all thrive.

But the group that received the biggest applause from the crowd was the emergency services. And like all good annual holidays, the day was finished off with a fireworks display centered around the Eiffel Tower. Some things are the same in whatever country.

In amid the suspended stockings filled with sand, the neon, the totally blue canvasses (oddly enough titled Blue) at Paris’ Pompidou Centre was the real thing: Kandinsky’s Two Green Points.

This week has been the real thing. Nothing quite matches seeing the sights of Paris that so often appear on postcards, in magazines and in other cities (how many towns can lay claim to a smaller version of teh Eiffel Tower?).

I admit I have had to share looking at some of these sights, such as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with a throng of tourists, but Paris still has its charm.

There aren’t too many places where I can lie on the grass and watch the lights on the Eiffel Tower sparkle at twilight, or hear Notre Dame’s 7800 pipes be put through their paces at an organ recital, or look at paintings in the Musee d’Orsay by Van Gogh of the very towns I visited only a week ago in the south of France.