Pearl Harbor The Travel Show

we visit the memorial site, 75 years after the Japanese bombing

raid that drew the Americans into World War II.

Also coming up, we're in rattlesnake country,

on the trail of ancient Native American art.

Simon's looking for guaranteed snow for a four-year-old

We're starting this week in the Pacific Ocean,

in the beautiful volcanic archipelago of Hawaii.

Below me, Oahu, the state's third biggest island

and home to its capital, Honolulu.

American pilots would have practised in one of these before graduating

to the fighters and bombers of the Second World War.

This one's been restored for tourists.

But 75 years ago this December, Japanese pilots approach the US

naval base here with very different intentions.

At 7:55am on December 7th, the first of two waves of Japanese

aircraft began their devastating assault on Pearl Harbor.

Within two hours, five battleships had been sunk,

and more than 2,400 Americans killed.

That attack drew the United States into World War II.

These days, the site is still an active naval base,

as well as being a museum, a national monument to those killed

Ironically, many of those who come are from Japan.

I wanted to learn from the history, and my stepfather, it was his dream

to come here, to pray, to thank to the world.

She is three football fields long, 20 stories tall.

The primary visitor to Hawaii, especially when I first came

here in the late 1980s, was predominantly Japanese.

There were also some Japanese who would not come because they felt

ashamed or they felt they would be somehow mistreated.

We have worked very hard toward reconciliation.

In 1991, I was actively engaged along with others in exercising

But it had to come from the veterans as well,

The main event for many visitors here is a boat ride out

to the sunken wreck of the USS Arizona.

The crowd size is kept as small and dignified as possible.

The memorial straddles the hull of the Arizona,

Around 900 servicemen killed on the attack remain on the ship.

On December 7th, as part of the commemoration,

two American Pearl Harbor veterans who have recently died

There are thought to be around 2,000 survivors still remaining.

The youngest military survivor will be 93 now.

But, despite their advancing years, some still visit the base,

I enjoy coming down here, I meet people from just

It was all in the morning, of course.

I had a 30 calibre rifle, shooting at the planes.

When the first officers came aboard, they took my gun away and told me

to go to the warehouse, because I was in supplies.

At that time I felt real naked, like I didn't have anything

It was scary, I'll be honest with you.

But after a while, you have to ignore it and try

There are a number of services and events in the week leading up

to the 75th anniversary on December 7th.

Some are quiet, private events, but there are also concerts

and parades planned that are free for everyone to go and see.

And if you're thinking of coming to Hawaii in the near future,

here are things that you will need to know.

Even away from the big memorial events, it's worth booking ahead

You can pick up tickets on the day but there is often a massive queue,

Hawaii is home to three active volcanoes, one of which has been

It is often difficult to get close to see much,

so try and time your visit to the national park at dusk,

so you can see the eerie glow from Kilauea more clearly.

The lava tubes made up from a dried up river of red lava

And the Kona coast on the west side of Hawaii's big island is the best

place locally to swim with one of the world's most accessible

You will have an 80% to 90% chance of seeing them and, after dark,

Next this week, our thirsty explorer is off to Paris, to tackle a drink

I set out to find the truth about the spirit that caused so much

trouble in Europe at the start of the 20th century.

Our first stop was the Combier distillery, in the town of Saumur.

This place is amazing, it looks like the home of a mad

scientist or something, when is this from?

It is made from two basic ingredients, which are

Wormwood, said to be a plant that grew in the Garden of Eden,

was used for a host of medicinal purposes and believed

But most people know it falsely for its mythical

You can drink today a real absinthe, with the same taste

Yes, yes, we did not change the recipe.

At the height of its popularity, Parisians were drinking roughly six

The conspiracy goes that the wine industry used its power

to sensationalise and murder, and spark the beginning

Today, nowadays, you can prove that it is not true.

The thujone level is very low, although we respected

But the levels of thujone, the chemical in wormwood,

were always too low to cause hallucinations, and so France

repealed in 1915 absinthe prohibition, starting in 1988.

I hit the road, curious to find out if absinthe had

I headed to the neighbourhood of Bastille.

Here is where most of the absinthe bars are located.

This is all about the absinthe, it is a French tradition, for me.

First, fill the fountain with ice-cold water, next,

pour two centrelitres of flavoured absinthe, ranging from

Finally open the tap to drip the water very slowly over the sugar

You have this tradition, the families, sometimes,

It was amazing to see how misunderstood the spirit still is,

even in the country where absinthe is inextricably linked with history

and art, most people drinking it did so out of nostalgia.

At the end of the night, no magical creatures rose

from my spoon, but watching the fountain drip throughout the night

was an as vertically beautiful, extremely social ritual,

it was easy to see why Parisians fell in love with absinthe more

With life moving so fast these days, I hope they can find the time to sit

Still to come on the Travel Show: Simon is here, with tips for a dream

And we braved the heat of the desert, in search of art.

Welcome to the slice of the show which tackles your

questions about getting the best out of travel.

Coming up shortly, my tip for the ideal Canadian rail journey,

and where to find guaranteed snow to provide fun for a four-year-old.

But first, a lot of excitement among European train fans

about the impending opening of the longest railway

tunnel in the world, the 57 kilometre Gotthart Base

From mid-December, expresses between Zurich and Milan

will be 37 minutes faster, but rest assured, if, like me,

for scenery, the old route through the mountains will still be

I want to book a hotel in Sydney for New Year 2017/18.

Are there any websites that book more than 12 months ahead?

Unlike airlines, which rarely sell seats as far as a year ahead,

hotels don't have hard and fast rules about when bookings

open but many of them limit their booking window

Even when their systems appear to allow more distant reservations,

you will often see it sold out for any night over one year ahead,

partly to prevent online bookers from selecting in error

Of course, you could wait for the booking window

of your chosen hotel to open, but I suggest you talk directly

to the hotel reservation staff, to make sure you get the room

They'll probably ask for a deposit now and the remainder

Rachel Shaw has a concise request about a vast country.

Vancouver is the start and end of what I regard

as the optimum trip, the Rocky Mountaineer Rainforest

to Gold Rush Route, from North Vancouver station.

It runs via the ski resort of Whistler,

and beside the Fraser River Canyon, and some incredible desert

scenery, to Prince George, and the town of Jasper,

From here, switch to the Canadian, the transcontinental

service from Toronto, which uses the original 1955

Go west through some dreamy Rocky Mountains scenery,

then slumber overnight to Vancouver, where you will arrive

Finally, Seb is evidently a generous grandfather.

My four-year-old grandson's dream is to spend three to four days over

Christmas in the place where snow is guaranteed.

So I reckon for absolute certainty, you need easy access to a ski

resort, where there are snowmaking facilities.

The ideal location is Zell am See in north-west Austria,

a beautiful town set magnificently beside a lake.

from where the train takes about 90 minutes,

make sure it is daytime, because it is one of Austria's

From December to April, there is a very good

chance of snow here, but if for some reason it

does not materialise, bus 680 will take you in less

than half an hour to the result of Saalbach, which I know

from experience last New Year makes prodigious amounts of snow,

Whether you are looking for snow or sun, the Travel

E-mail your question to the Travel Show.

I will do my very best to find you an answer.

From me, Simon Calder, global guru, goodbye for now,

Now for a country always eager to celebrate its history,

there is remarkably little commemoration of the USA's olddest

heritage, art created by its Indigenous Peoples.

Some may say that is not surprising, given the particularly brutal way

many Native Americans were treated during settlement

Here in Arizona, in the south of the US, you can find some

of the biggest collections of historical Native American art.

The famous tribes of Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo Indians settled

here, and today they help make up the second largest total

Native American population of any American state.

In fact, a quarter of the state is reservation land.

We drove deep into the desert, 90 miles south-west

It's here, in the middle of nowhere, that you suddenly

find 800 or so examples of ancient petroglyphic art.

Some of these etchings go back as far as 7000 years.

It's mostly created by the chipping and scraping away of the top surface

of the boulders, to expose a lighter layer underneath.

The patterns that you see are patterns that you would see

Christopher Short is a passionate student

They are all beautiful, they are all connections

Remember that these people did not have any written tradition,

they have oral histories, oral storytelling, and they had

That is the history we have to work with.

Christopher photographed traditional petroglyphss

He is descended on his mother's side from an Indian tribe

but he did not feel connected to his roots until he moved

from Oklahoma to live here, in Arizona.

I am a citizen of the Potawatomi nation.

My native name means source of light. quite appropriate

The work is both symbolic and naturalistic, and goes back

They are believed to have been remnants of the Hohokam community;

hohokam literally means "the people who came before."

Native American culture is very important.

It is the history of this country, and the undercurrent

Before there were settlers, there was this culture,

and there were these people, eating and surviving and thriving

and telling stories and singing songs and making their artwork.

That is something that is important enough that it has to be preserved.

There is a really profound sense of whimsy in some

You see representations of people with what looks like

To me, that makes me laugh, that is the spirit of whimsy

and the spirit of play, which I think is important in any

But this site, like many others, is under threat, and the degrading

of the ancient art is not just because of age or the weather.

We have everything from people shooting at cultural sites

like this, especially petroglyphs, shooting them

Throwing paint on something, the paint does not go away,

it absorbs into the rock and it is very hard

Even the oils in our hands can destroy the surfaces

Cheryl's job is to help in the management and protection

of ancient sites like this, and in educating the wider American

The modern Indigenous Peoples regard this as a very special place.

It is also part of our shared heritage.

A lot of these rocks are a very dark colour,

The elements in this exposed landscape are an obvious problem

in the preservation of the sites, but then, there is also vandalism.

That is the part that becomes interesting, because there is even

Some of the historians get very interested in that,

and they will try to do searches on those names,

to see if they were connected with some historic trails, for instance.

That division between graffiti and historic is sometimes

So there are real issues about preservation of

But this is where Christopher steps back in.

He photographs and then recreates the petroglyphs,

What symbols, what artwork are you looking for,

I look for stuff that is stylistically interesting but also,

simple enough that when I project it, it is not

These individual shapes here, like this lizard, absolutely

I have taken pictures, I have added them to a library.

Then it is back to his place, to photoshop the images

I have put a selection there, so I can isolate it

from the background, and in doing so, I am finding lines

Stage three is the clever and artistic bit.

Using laser projection of digitised images onto sandstone rock,

which Chris has gathered from the desert.

This looks like a jumble of rocks but it is very carefully set

The purpose is to create what he calls impressionistic dreamscapes.

Everything is set up, we are ready to go.

Basically, I'm turning rock art into science fiction.

This is spirit, and science, and art, all intersecting

Christopher is doing more than that, he is showing how this much

neglected jewel of American heritage can live on,

and inform and enrich the lives of generations to come.

That's it for this week, join us next week, when...

There is another chance to see the journey through Bavaria,

from surfing in Munich to sleeping deep underneath a mountain range.

It is way past 1am, they are playing these big drums.

To seeing one of the world's strangest and most noisy festivals.

Don't forget, you can follow us in real time

on our social media feeds, the detail should be

Until next time, from me, Carmen Roberts, and the rest

of The Travel Show team in Hawaii, it is goodbye.

Early on this week it was pretty miserable, with heavy, persistent