CONTINENTAL Airlines have not only provided us with a top-class scheduled transatlantic service throughout the past year, they have put Belfast firmly on the map of great global destinations.

This profound thought occurred to me the other day when I was standing in front of Continental's main non-stop destination board at New York/Liberty International Airport (Newark) and saw, for the first-time in my much-travelled life, the name - Belfast' coming up as an equal along with other, bigger capital cities: Delhi, Stockholm, Sao Paulo, Amman etc.

I confess to feeling a warm glow of pride that my native city had taken another big step to international recognition as a world-class destination instead of being a second-leg city from where we had the inconvenience, expense and indignity of having to get to London, Glasgow or Dublin for transatlantic scheduled services.

It's not really surprising that it was Continental which brought the all-year-round service to Belfast International Airport last Spring. Not many people know that it serves more destinations worldwide than any other airline, including more international destinations than any other US airline. My own destination was Los Angeles, starting-point for my two-week exploration of Southern California. It was the perfect choice for me to try out the effectiveness of Continental's intention that we should use its Belfast-Newark route as our Gateway to the Americas, with 170 destinations available in the USA, Canada and Latin America.

And that's how I managed to have breakfast in Belfast, a Starbucks double espresso in Newark after a surprisingly fast and hassle-free passage through US Immigration, followed by a pleasant flight to LAX.

This left plenty of time to drive our sporty Holiday Autos Chevy Cobalt to our Beverly Hills boutique hotel in time for teatime nibbles at 6pm (Thanks to the fact flights were on time and that LA is 8 hours ahead!)

I shall be reporting on the excellence of the Continental flights - including the pampered pleasures of its award-winning BusinessFirst service - in my main Southern California coverage in next month's Travel News.

California

at last

WHEN I lived and worked in the USA as a foreign correspondent in the early 1990s I had an AirPass that allowed me virtually unlimited travel.

I would escape from my pleasant Midwestern base in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to almost every corner of America: from the Florida Keys and Texas Plains to the Rocky Mountains and New Jersey Shores; from the clangorous cafés of the New Orleans French Quarter to the tranquil burial grounds of Ulster-Scots pioneers in the Shenandoah Valley; from the upright dignity of downtown Washington DC to the down-and-dirty blues clubs of Chicago's Southside.

In less than a year I flew 58,000 miles and visited 22 States by car. In the intervening years I have returned to America a lot, so my total of States is now 31, if you include the 20 minutes it took us to drive across Delaware and the 11-mile detour through Rhode Island!

Between my weekly Only in America page for Sunday Life, and the Destination Reports published here in TraveI News, plus stuff in travel mags and books, I have probably written a half-million words about America.

Amazingly, not more than a mouthful of those words has been about Southern California. That's because until a few weeks ago I had never set foot, flew over or drove across any part of California except for a delightful week visiting San Francisco and nearby Sausalito where Van Morrison used to live.

That's why my trip had such a profound effect on me. Southern California is an overwhelming place, unlike any other I've experienced in the USA or elsewhere - from the frightening volume of the traffic on the LA highways, the vastness of its sandy beaches, the affluence of most citizens and the opulence of their mansions, plus the sheer quality of life enjoyed by its bronzed families under a sun that shines 320 days a year.

It also has more characters per square yard than any other place on earth (with the exception of the old Duke of York bar off Lower Donegall Street in the 60s). Here are a couple who made my trip trewly memorable...

Movie genius

Brian Donnelly

I BET you didn't know that there's a BELFAST Drive just off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I happened to see Joaquin Phoenix (he's Johnny Cash in the current hit biopic Walk the Line') coming out of No. 1450, one of the many multi-million dollar mansions in this exclusive street.

Belfast Drive, believe it or not, adjoins LONDONDERRY Place - that's where Ronald Regan owned No.1159 with Jane Wyman after they were married. No, I am not claiming to have seen Ronnie, otherwise you would think that I'm kidding. The naming of those streets is probably due to a property developer relation of William Mulholland, the Ulster-Scots engineer who gave water (and thus life) to LA.

How did I get all this stuff? Simply by taking a guided tour of the Movie Stars mansions in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I travelled by STARLINE, the acknowledged best of all the services. By a great stroke of luck we were assigned to the mini-bus driven by its chief guide, Brian Donnelly, the funniest, most knowledgable movie-buff in the world.

You not only get to see about 40 homes of real stars and famous movie locations (plus dozens of places associated with American TV personalities I never heard of), you also get Brian's views on marriage money, plus a torrent of Tinseltown trivia that is awesome, sometimes gruesome, as he points out famous and infamous places,

That's where John Belushi died; there's the synagogue where Elizabeth Taylor married Eddie Fisher; the house where Hallowe'en was filmed; next door is the one in the Spencer Tracy original verson of Father of the Bride; the City Hall which doubled as the opulent police HQ in Beverly Hills Cop; the exclusive lingerie boutique in Rodeo Drive where Sharon Stone buys her knickers ("Why does she not wear them"). Fascinating or what!

The eight other gossip-sniffers on my bus took as many pictures of the public convenience where George Michael was arrested for being naughty as they did of the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. I'm hypocritical - I'm the only passenger to have won a bag of Tootsie Rolls from Brian when I answered "Divine Brown" to his question: "Who was the hooker found with Hugh Grant in that carpark over there"

Starline Tours start from the courtyard of the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.Tel: (323) 463-3333. www.starlinetours.com. They cost around £25 a head, and most people tip Brian generously for giving them what is surely one of the best guided tours in the world. Ask for him by name.

As well as being taken to the spot on Mulholland Scenic Corridor from which to see the HOLLYWOOD sign in the distance, you'll take lots of blurry photos of security fences and front lawns. You'll spend hours back home showing your friends Greta Garbo's garden - or was that Robert Wagner's driveway? Ozzy Osborne's dog-run? Bing Crosby's putting green?. Who cares, it's Hollywood - nothing is ever as it seems.

Morgan the

Desert Fox

MORGAN Wind-in-her-Hair is the very appropriate name for the characterful guide who drove me in an open jeep through the desert surrounding Palm Springs,140 miles - but a million light years - from my Hollywood tour. It turned out to be one of the most eye-opening excursions of my career as a travel writer.

As befits her Native American heritage, Morgan wears her hair in a braided pigtail, she drove like the wind across bleak plains pausing only to show us an oasis or two, an old gold mine and a deserted tribal village.

For the previous 10 days I had been staying in two of the world's biggest urban areas, LA and San Diego, as well as coastal resorts along the celebrated Pacific Coast Highway. The contrast could not have been greater and, as a natural teacher, Morgan relished the amazement I showed in learning about her wilderness of wonders.

Every now and then she would hop off her jeep and crouch over the tracks of a mountain lion in the fine grey dust, just like Tonto the Indian did in my childhood favourite Lone Ranger movies. But was real life and these were the tracks of a trio of lions which roam this part of the desert.

Not long ago, one of them killed a mountain biker out for a spin in the canyons and just ate his liver.

Another attacked a female jogger. As they say in California, it's a jungle out there.

The three American lady executives who were my fellow explorers (sounds better than tourists) were very amused when I took photos of of the PortaKabin loo in the middle of the tribal village and another of a pitiful pile of coyote poo!

The loo, Morgan told us in her colourful - and ceaseless - commentary, was the 'Pee-Pee Teepee'. I should have taken a note of all her witticisms, but trying to hold pen and paper while being bounced around would have been impossible.

What an exhliarating experience! The trip is one of a selection offered by Desert Adventures Eco-Tours which include trips to the Joshua Tree National Park (remember the U2 album?) and even night-time trips to observe the moon and stars free of urban light pollution. Tel: Palm Springs (760) 324 5337. Check out www.red-jeep.com. Highly recommended.

I joined their San Andreas Fault Earthquake Adventure to learn about the geophysical time-bomb which will cause a mighty earthquake likely to destroy communities up the backbone of California.

I actually walked inside a 10-foot deep crack which has recently opened up along the Faultline in the desert, causing clumps of native Californian palm-trees to keel over and dunes to disappear.

"That's the way skyscrapers and bridges are gonna fall into an abyss a thousand times bigger than that - mebbe sooner rather than later," said Morgan with a grim smile.

BY JOHN TREW