Although, cahracteristically, you know everything worth knowing about where you've been, you haven't been everywhere. You go where you're sent, as you can smilingly remind anybody who looks surprised at your ignorance of St. Tropez or Copenhagen or Bethnal Green. Your gazeteer is not a bulky afair.

London

You live in a small but comfortable flat in a converted Regency house in a little square off the King's Road [M1, 3]. You have been known to stay at The Ritz, but only in exceptional circumstances: When pretending to be a diamond smuggler [DAF 3], or after being brainwashed by the KGB [TMWTGG 1]. You often visit an exclusive St. James's Street club, but you take yor line from our founder in not coming clean about which one [M 3,4]. Your favourite restaurant is Scott's in Coventry St. (Now located on 20 Mount St, Mayfair -CC.) [DAF 3]. Go for the dressed crab and Black Velvet, or the roast grouse and pink Champagne [YOLT 3].

Outside London

The farthest you go is to the golf courses within easy reach (see Exercise) and to handy places like the Channel Packet in Ramsgate - good ham sandwiches [G 7] - and the Cafe Royal in Dover - good scrambled eggs and bacon [M 13]. Any 007's living outside the Home Counties would be well advised to keep it quiet.

Paris

You invariable stay at the Terminus Nord, because you like station hotels and because this is the least prtetentious and most anonymous of them. You lunch at the Cafe de la Paix, the Rotonde or the Dome, because the food's good enough and it amuses you to watch the people.

For a solid drink, you go to Harry's Bar, for a non-solid one to Fouquet's. For dinner, Grand Vefour, Lucas-Carton or the Cochon d'Or. These you consider, whatever the Michelin may say about Tour d'Argent, Maxim's and the like, to have somehow avoided the tarnish of the expense account and the dollar. Anyway, you prefer their cooking. After dinner, you go to the Place Pigalle to see what will happen to you. Nothing does.

You have cordially disliked Paris since the war. It has pawned its heart to the tourists, the Russians, the Bulgars and the Roumanians, to the scum of the world who have gradually taken the town over. And, of course, to the Germans. You can see it in the people's eyes - sullen, envious, ashamed [FYEO 1]

Outside Paris

Here again you go for station hotels, where one can hear the heartbeat of the town. The one at Orleans is good enough, though the town itself is bad: Protest and myth-ridden, living off Joan of Arc. Given the choice, you'd stay nearby at the Auberge de la Montespan (and eat lots of quenelles de brochet) [G 12]. By the Loire, perhaps your favourite river in the world [OHMSS 2], the little places like Beaugency are your preference, not the five-star life, the chateau towns [M 25].

Down south, at Les Baux [G 12] by the mouth of the Rhone, you stay at the fabulous Baumaniere, the only hotel-restaurant in France with Michelin's supreme accolade (go for the gratin de langouste).

In the northeast, visit Strasbourg and stay at the Hotel Maison Rouge [OHMSS 24], and out of deference to local tradition order pate de foie gras, plus champagne.

Venice

Stay at the Gritti Palace, drink at Harry's Bar, Florian's, upstairs at the Quadri [FYEO 4]. May and October are the best months - its cooler, the air's fresher and it's better to share the place with the minimum number of packaged tours and Lederhosen. Avoid the Lido, unless you fancy being chased for over a mile by a top smuggler and his men.

Istanbul

Your instinct tells you, as it has told other travellers, that you'll be glad to get out of the place alive [FRWL 19].

New York

Stay at the St. Regis or the Astor [LALD 1, DAF 9, 10]. Eat at Voisin's or at the 21 Club on 52nd Street., where you and your companion may be given a white creme de menthe stinger on the house [DAF 9]. Avoid Harlem, unless you fancy being suddenly transported into the presence of megalomaniac Negro gangster [LALD 7].

Outside New York

Going north out of town up the Taconic Parkway, stop for lunch at the Chicken in the Basket [DAF 10] - don't take the chicken in the basket but scrambled eggs and sausages. In Saratoga, stay at the Sagamore Motel on the outskirts and eat the chicken dinner at the restauarant just down the street [DAF 11]. Motels in general are all right, even when they're called things like the Ko-Zee [FYEO 2]. When in Miami, drive down to Bill's on the Beach for stone crabs and pink champagne [G 2]. Avoid St. Petersburg - Full of oldsters trying to keep alive until ninety. It frightened the life out of you [LALD 13].