Around the World in 80 Days

By Temple Ligon
January 17, 2014

 
Sometime in the summer of 2011, and I can’t remember exactly when, I decided to track Phileas Fogg’s route ’round the world. I had seen Michael Todd’s film version of Jules Verne’s adventure story – Around the World in 80 Days – on the big screen and on the tube several times, beginning in 1956. I, too, would take no more than 80 days to circumnavigate the globe.
 
Todd had a perfect record. He made one movie in his lifetime, and that one movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture. And while he was at it, he scored Elizabeth Taylor for his bride, just to rub it in a little.
 
First on my to-do list was to read Verne, and that’s when I found out the balloon business out of Paris was Todd’s invention for his movie. In the book, Fogg took the train out of Paris for Italy, not the balloon. So would I.
 
Second on the list was some preliminary planning. I had to keep in mind that Fogg took off on a moment’s notice with no visas and the like. He and Passepartout had passports, but that was about it. The idea of inoculations for the Third World was unheard of.  I was a pin cushion, just to be safe. I hadn’t had any such shots since the military, and that was the late ’60s.
 
I expected problems with getting my visas approved for Vietnam and mainland China, so I went through a Washington group who took care of all that on a short notice for a fat fee. Western Europe I didn’t worry about, and I was not going to Russia, but I should have worried about India and Bangladesh. More on that when this recall gets us into the process of visa approval applications for India and Bangladesh. Pain.
 
Third on my to-do list was to find myself a Passepartout, Fogg’s valet. In my case, I was not interested in traveling with a valet, but any woman worth the trip had too many responsibilities to take out three months, and even one week was a tough call. The longest legs of the journey were the boat trips across the Atlantic and across the Pacific. Other than those two segments, the trip could accommodate a Passepartout for just about any time or distance. I started with Passepartout #1, who could make the overnight train to New York City, stay the night and board the Queen Victoria for an eight-day sail to Southhampton, where we would part and she would return to Columbia.
 
But Passepartout #1 couldn’t get her superiors to go along even though she had the vacation time to pull it off. Passepartout #2 surfaced with the accrued time but she begged off in favor of either taking a week running through Italy or staying a week in India. As it turned out, Paspartout #2 came to Rome for Easter.
 
Passepartout #3 was among three real remaining possibilities – #3, #4 and #5 – all concurrently trying to make sense out of my offer to sail the Queen Victoria across the North Atlantic. The offer was getting more attractive, as I had accepted Cunard’s last of three free upgrades. I didn’t understand the cruise ship business, but I did understand I was getting a good deal when Cunard offered me the Queen’s Grill Penthouse Suite and its oversized deck, which included butler service. I think I paid for something less than 200 square feet and I was getting almost 700 square feet plus a butler. Fair enough. Besides the commodious flat, out status included dining in the Queen’s Grill, the ship’s best. We had an assigned window table where we could leave our unfinished wine for the next time at the table.
 
Passepartout #4 was getting serious about the train ride across India, and #5 wanted to see the Far East. An actress with no foreseeable call-backs during her travel time, Passepartout #3 was first to come through on the North Atlantic, but only after I promised to pay for her return flight from France, where she planned to visit after we parted in London.
 
Once I had the first leg and the first Passepartout in line, I could plan our departure from Columbia. Fogg, of course, departed the Reform Club in London, betting he could return to the club within 80 days. I lived in Columbia. So Passepartout and I departed the bar at the Capital City Club after 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 14, and I planned to return alone before 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 2, also at the club bar.
 
As was true with Fogg, that was about it. No rules, really, except for both Fogg and me there would probably be a little bit of an objection to taking the shortest possible route ’round the world. That was the idea a man could theoretically stand with one foot on top of the North Pole and turn 360 degrees with the other, circling the world with one foot standing on the pole and the other pushing around. There. That was going ’round the world in less than 80 seconds.
 
Verne’s book and Todd’s movie make no mention of such extremism, but there could have been another extreme, the longest route, which would be to depart London heading due south and hang a left on the Equator.       
 
Fogg took an eastward above-the-Equator route, to include Paris, Brindisi, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York City, and back to London.   
 
I did the same, roughly, trying to not only follow Fogg’s footsteps but to keep to 1872 means of travel, mostly boats and trains.
 
A friend with a Washington DC club membership good for reciprocity at the Reform Club in London put me and Passepartout up for a visit. Todd’s 1956 movie filmed its Reform Club scenes somewhere else because the elite Reform Club wouldn’t allow moviemaking on its premises. They did, though, honor my friend’s letter for me and Passepartout.
 
Outside of London, my early plans included two nights in my family’s hotel, the Lygon Arms in Broadway, and a tour of the nearby Morgan automobile factory close to our family home, Madresfield Court. I wanted to take the Chunnel Train to Paris to have one ridiculously wonderful dinner at the world’s most expensive tourist trap, La Tour d’Argent, which has been serving meals at the same street intersection since 1582. They keep more than 400,000 bottles of wine in the cellar. Where do you think the Germans first went?
 
Out of Paris I planned on taking the train all the way down the Italian peninsula to Sicily, meeting a French freighter in Malta and taking that across the Mediterranean and down the Suez Canal.
 
While Fogg sailed into San Francisco to take the train to New York City, I sailed into Vancouver to take the train to Los Angeles, where I stayed two nights in the Biltmore, and then I took the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, where I had promised myself a long languid liquid lunch at Galatoire’s before I made the decision on how to return to Columbia. I could spend the trip’s last night in the storied Hay-Adams overlooking the White House, or I could stay the night overlooking America’s oldest house in St. Augustine. Amtrak’s schedules helped me decide. Either way, I had to pull into Columbia in the wee hours of Saturday, June 2.
 
I had my MacBook Air and my BB&T debit card, something removed from Fogg’s conveniences, but I didn’t want to get too pure in my recall of 1872. With the internet, travel can be a breeze and can be an assured approach to room reservations and travel tickets.
 
It’s my guess Verne got the idea to write the book in late 1872, which was when the railroad across India was completed. The railroad across the United States was completed at Provo, Utah, just a few years earlier, and the Suez Canal earlier still. The combination of the three made for a much smaller world, but until Verne no one had illustrated it so well. Verne’s book, set in 1872, came out in 1873.
 
Fogg, the financially independent eccentric, didn’t plan his trip at all. He agreed to the wager at the Reform Club, finished his card game, went to his home on Savile Row to pack and to tell Passepartout  to do the same to leave in 10 minutes. Fogg’s wager was worth 20,000 pounds, about a million dollars in today’s purchasing power, and the cash he packed into his carpet bag also came to 20,000 pounds.
 
Well, I didn’t live anywhere near that level of largesse, but I could commit to myself a budget ranging between $20,000 and $30,000, which to me was a fortune; but, what the hell, what are fortunes for, anyway?
 
Passepartout and I shared cocktails at 6:00 p.m., March 14, with our well-wishers at the Capital City Club bar, and by 7:00 we were on our way to my flat in the old Kress building on Main Street. I was somewhat ready, but I finished packing in 10 minutes, just to add a little Fogg authenticity.
 
We had contracted with a college student to take us to the Amtrak station in Florence, where we waited about an hour for the train to New York City. We had a sleeper for two, one bunk down and one bunk up. While we slept, out neighbor across the hall, the nice lady who showed us how to find room for our luggage, had a heart attack near Raleigh, where an ambulance met the train and took her to the hospital.

(To be continued…)

Reach Temple at – [email protected]

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