THERE HAS rarely been a better time to travel to America. With the US and Canadian dollar exchange rates staying in our favour, and increasing opportunities to fly the Atlantic directly from Belfast, it has never been easier to experience the magic of America.

After clocking up around 58,000 miles in the past 26 years, I think I can claim to know most of the best places to enjoy a vacation. I'm not long back from Southern California which certainly deserves to be on everybody's Must-See List. Here is my selection, in no particular order, of some other personal favourites that are sure to please:

NEW YORK is more edgy and exciting than ever. Shopping and dining out are the biggest attractions, but you can save money by crossing over to New Jersey to buy low-tax clothing from discount malls. My favourite place in the world is Ocean Grove, an unspoilt seaside resort on the Jersey Shores, one hour south of Newark. Don't miss the free cruise on NYC's Staten Island Ferry.

TORONTO AND SOUTH ONTARIO have more citizens of Ulster descent than in the whole of Northern Ireland which may be why I feel so much at home - even in the Chinese and Caribbean communities. Don't miss a trip to Niagara Falls, of course, but also go to stimulating Stratford, Ontario and slip into Michigan where I spend one of the happiest periods of my life.

Brilliant museums

WASHINGTON DC sightseeing, combined with a motoring tour of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (Skyline Drive is stupendous) and an exploration of Civil War battlefields, will give you insights to what makes Americans tick. Don't miss the brilliant Smithsonian Museums.

ORLANDO and the Florida beaches are still finest for families. I just wish more folks would explore the real Everglades, where I once observed 42 bird species, six wild alligators, umpteen turtles and a huge water snake - in ONE DAY. Don't miss Sanibel Island, the shell-seekers paradise. LAS VEGAS is best for adults , and rich ones at that, since the slot machines start at the airport baggage claim! Fantasy hotels plus incredible shows make Vegas a must-see and a once in a lifetime experience. Don't miss a Gray Line Tour to gape at the Grand Canyon. Awesome. NASHVILLE and Memphis are in my beloved Tennessee, homeland of country music, rock 'n roll, down-home cookin' and the friendliest people west of Broughshane. Don't miss a tour of Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg - but get your dinner in some other town as they 'roll the sidewalks up at six o'clock'. Rush past Pigeon Forge, a monstrosity of malls and awful amusements,on your way to the Great Smokey Mountains.

NEW ORLEANS is my spiritual home, as a jazz fan, so I encourage everyone to go soon to the French Quarter, now getting back in business after Hurricane Katrina. Don't miss a night out on Bourbon Street, where anything goes...

SAVANNAH, Georgia, is the 'purtiest' town in the Old South - a place that looks like a movie set from Gone With the Wind. Atlanta and Augusta are also famous, but I prefer Macon, a gem of a city unknown here. Don't miss an excursion to Jekyll Island,once the playground of USA's richest families.

KENTUCKY'S Bluegrass Country is another largely undiscovered part of America the Beautiful. I was awarded the accolade of Kentucky Colonel by Governor John Y. Brown for my services to his State's tourism, so I always urge Ireland's equestrian enthusiasts to see this heaven for horses. Don't miss the Kentucky Derby.

BOSTON and New England are at their best in the autumn, when leaf-peepers will see colours that don't seem real. Cape Ann is less crowded than Cape Cod in summer. Don't miss eating boiled lobster in the street in picturesque Rockport.I haven't the space here to mention some of my all-time greats like Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Montreal and Quebec, nor very special places to me like Mustang Island, Texas; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And if you want to discover Unknown America, seek out Belfast in Ulster County, Upper New York State, which would be a one-horse town - if they had a horse.

I left my heart in LA-LA Land

I FELL in love with Los Angeles within an hour of landing at Los Angeles International (LAX). Firstly, the Holiday Autos agent gave us a FREE upgrade to a sleek new Chevy Cobalt when he heard it was our first time in LA; the journey to our hotel, Maison 140 Beverly Hills, turned out to be entirely FREE of hassle instead of the rush tour nightmare we had feared; then we found a FREE parking spot right outside the front door and, to crown it all, we discovered that our arrival coincided with the Maison 140 Happy Hour, with FREE Californian wines and great nibbles.

Land of the Free - My Kinda Town! Lots of other treats turned out to be free in LA-LA Land, most notably the Getty Center, the most exciting, refreshing and stimulating museum/art gallery I have ever experienced. I decided to show my appreciation by spending £25 on five posters - an act of generosity that has already cost me £115 for framing just two of them. Everything else in LA turned out to be good value - restaurant meals, attractions, tours and shopping. I was really surprised and delighted that a double room in a superb boutique hotel like Maison 140 in the heart of Beverly Hills costs less than its equivalent in London, Dublin - or Belfast, for that matter. I spent a lot of time researching hotels on your behalf, as there are a bewildering variety in all the cities that comprise LA - Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Brentwood, Pasadena, Santa Monica etc - and it's essential that you choose right. I settled on the highly-praised, medium-sized (43 rooms) Maison 140 because of its proximity to the main attractions and its value for money.

For example, its current A La Carte Package offers a Parisian double room with 'gi-normous' king-size bed (only slightly smaller than Windsor Park), a healthy Californian breakfast of just-baked breads, pastries, juices, fruits and a bottomless cup of fresh-brew coffee - plus an extended check-out time of 3pm (so you can pack in a morning of sightseeing and a leisurely lunch before returning for a shower). All for $189 per room - that's just over £55 each, for two sharing (including the free evening Happy Hour). For a swim and then dinner, go to the Maison's sister Hotel Avalon (a ten-dollar taxi ride away) where the food at Restaurant Blue on Blue is the universally popular 'Cal-Ital-Lite' mix of salads, pasta dishes and grills.

The Maison is located behind The Peninsula Beverly Hills, a super deluxe hotel whose opulent Belvedere Restaurant served our best meal in LA. The basket of six different breads included a huge Parmesan Crisp which is among the world's tastiest treats, followed by Sean's Special Caesar Salad and a delightful steak, then seven fruity sorbets served in little tumblers mounted on a candleabra. When I told the maitre'd that I loved their cheesy Crisp, he gave me a bag of them to take away and then led me to the secret staff exit right opposite Maison 140. What a great meal and superlative service - for less than £20 a head! Visit www.beverlyhillspeninsula.com

Maison 140 is the former mansion of silent movie star Lillian Gish and the decor, a fusion of European and Asian extravagance, gives it a hint of Early Hollywood decadence that appeals to romantic couples as well as world-weary travellers (like me) on a constant quest for 'something different'. That's certainly an apt description for their matt-black-and-red Bar Noir, a popular spot for the beautiful people of the neighbourhood to lie back on the black leather sofas and indulge in a French Kiss. I hasten to say that this is the bar's famous cocktail - "a passionate embrace of brandy and bubbly with a puckery citrus twist". (One advantage of being tee-total is that I don't need to read the puckery prose on cocktail menus).

www.Maison140.com ; Tel: OO1 310 281 4000, Fax 001 310 281 4001 - It's at 140 Lasky Drive, near the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards within walking distance of the main Beverly Hills attractions. Very highly recommended.

Re-LAX at the Sheraton Gateway

Because of the morning departures of the connecting flights from LAX back to Newark, I strongly advise you to stay your last night - at least - at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel right alongside the airport and close to the car rental return. This is very plush and grand (800 rooms) and is unlike any other airport hotel I've used, with really excellent facilities, spacious rooms and a choice of bars/restaurants. I had one of my best burgers ever at Shula's 347, one of America's Top five Steakhouses, and there's a Starbucks in the vast lobby. The staff are astonishingly friendly, so it comes as no surprise to learn that many native Angelinos come to dine, have a drink and watch the planes. It's also very good value. www.sheratonlosangeles.com

TREW'S TOP L.A. TIPS

RENT A CAR because LA is vast and you will want to see everything, from the surf-washed Ocean beaches to the mansions in the hills. I always use Holiday Autos where there are usually great deals. Visit holidayautos.co.uk and check prices. You can collect a car at LAX, with everything included, from as little as £111 a week for a two-door economy to £208 for an 8-seater van. Remember that most hotels charge up to £15 for overnight parking, but you'll save on taxis.

GO TO GETTY CENTER, a mighty architectural complex of galleries and glorious gardens in the Brentwood hills with superlative panoramic views over the whole of Los Angeles. It is funded by the Trust of trillionaire J.Paul Getty, an oil tycoon of Ulster-Scots descent (whose GETTY HOUSE at Malibu is also a must-see.) The Center has exquisite collections of paintings, furniture and sculpture including my favourite - Van Gogh's 'Irises' worth more than $80 million. My poster of it was $15.

TAKE A TOUR of Tinseltown to see the star's homes and movie locations. I loved my three hours on the Starlight Tours minibus driven from historic Hollywood Boulevard to the magnificent palm-lined avenues of Beverly Hills by movie expert Brian Donnelly- LA's best guide. It starts at Graumann's Chinese Theatre where the stars have left their palm and footprints. John Wayne's feet look like a tiny Size 6, smaller than Judy Garland's and just a bit bigger than Lassie's paws.

SPEND THE DAY at Universal Studios Hollywood, LA's most popular attraction - 5m. visitors a year paying nearly $50 each ( unless you are an adult/child under four ft tall). Take a studio tour of the world's biggest production company and enjoy themed experiences - King Kong, Jurassic Park, Spiderman. I took a ride in the Belfast-built De Lorean car from Back to the Future - the only time I've ever been in one.

PUT ON YOUR best holiday outfit, hide your camera and go 'shopping' along the legendary RODEO DRIVE ( polite door-staff don't encourage tourists, backpackers and scruffs to enter these emporiums of extravagance). I was amazed by the quality of the interior design in shops like Prada where I was guided round by a friendly manager. Rodeo Two is a cobbled laneway that looks like an idealised cross between Bond Street and St Mark's Square in Venice- American imagineering at its fake finest. The cheapest clothing I saw was a silk thong at $55 - that's £7 a square inch! HEAD FOR THE HUNTINGTON, a trewly enchanting mix of art galleries, library and museum set amid world-class botanical gardens. I adored every part of it, from the picture-postcard Japanese Garden to the collection of the world's oldest printed books. I confess that most memorable of all was our hour-long Afternoon Tea in the Rose Garden Room; at £12, it's a fantastic all-you-dare-to-eat buffet of imaginative sandwiches, pastries, muffins, scones etc as well as dainty desserts,fruits and cakes to die ( but not diet) for, plus refills of a proper teapot. As World President of T-POTS (The Preservation Of Tea and Scones), I hereby award it the accolade: "America's Best Afternoon Tea" ( Tel 001 626-683-8131 to book). Surf's up, head for the beach!

SANTA MONICA is one of the coastal suburbs of Los Angeles, where Angelinos come out to surf,shop and dine. It's where I based myself for a few days of exploring the fabled beaches along the Pacific Coast Highway(PCH) at Venice, Malibu, Seal Beach and Manhattan (no, not NYC - it's the one where my favourite harmony group, the Beach Boys, grew up). The Channel Road Inn was a good choice - a typically American up-market B&B run by friendly, helpful ladies, featuring comfy rooms with balconies,free parking, nice soufflÈs for breakfast plus teatime nibbles. www.channelroadinn.com . Rates start at $210).

It's an historic Colonial Revival house , built in 1915 by Ayrshire-born Thomas McCall and furnished in what I call American Victorian/Early Laura Ashley. Very cosy indeed - the welcoming living room with its huge fireplace would be straight out of Dickens were it not for the (free) broadband laptop on the table. There are some good restaurants nearby ( as well as a terribly disappointing one serving so-so Italian food at prices that are no problem to the loud middle-rank movie-makers who make this dump fashionable).

Best to head up the PCH to GLADSTONE'S Seafood Restaurant right on the beach at Malibu, near the spot where Jim had his trailer in The Rockford Files. What an experience! Not only does everything come in super abundance (my ultra-fresh fresh Seafood Sampler at $25 could have fed a hungry family), the ocean views, the buzzing ambiance, the seaside-shack decor and the happy servers will add up to a meal to remember. A unique touch is the way the waiters competitively create artistic doggy bags from coloured aluminium foil. I watched them wrap leftovers as swans, giant crabs, sailing ships and mermaids -all deserve to be in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Doggy Bag Gallery).

Santa Monica Pier is where the celebrated Route 66 ended and where thousands still come all year round to walk on water and see the LA sights from its Giant Funfair Ferris Wheel. I sat on the very carousel that appeared in The Sting and ate a bucket of shrimp in a place inspired by the movie Forrest Gump. Around LA you're never far from a movie location. We even saw three being made (including a TV commercial on Rodeo Drive and a mini-series episode in Pasadena). When we rented tricycles and rode on the Santa Monica boardwalk which stretches for many miles along the sands, we passed a crowd of extras in city suits being coached in a beach park for some movie. When I approached the mobile dressing rooms, a stroppy security guard screamed "No Photos" and wouldn't tell me who the stars were - the only unpleasant moment in our 20 lovely Californian days. Venice Beach was tacky but exciting - full of eccentrics, wierdos and skimpily-dressed joggers showing off outrageous tattoos. Van Morrison's music was emanating from beachside stalls selling everything from hand-carved dope pipes and magic crystals to metal trinkets to hang from your belly-button ring. Get the picture?

Portrush-on-the-Pacific Manhattan and Redondo were a bit dull off-season, but I fell in love with Seal Beach much further south near Long Beach. This is a little corner of The Real America, a spotless community of nice people living in neat clap-board homes alongside a famous beach where the surfers were mostly over 50 - silver surfers, indeed, We had breakfast in the diner at the end of its historic pier ( most PCH towns have piers) and watched dolphins as we ate fluffy flapjacks, Sheer bliss! Seal Beach is now on my list of possible retirement locations, along with Puerto Banus and Cala Ratjada (Spain), Villefranche (France), Noosa (Australia), Ocean Grove ( New Jersey) and Bangor West ( home).

Happy Birthday, Uncle Walt DISNEYLAND is still the Number One Dream Destination for most of the kids I've ever known ( except myself for some reason) so its on-going Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration is a good excuse to have your own family get-together at the enormous Resort 30 miles south of LA. Nobody does this kind of magic better - and certainly not bigger - than Uncle Walt Disney. Now, as well as Disneyland, there's Disney's California Adventure and an expanded Downtown Disney experience plus new accommodation. There's so much to see and do that you just have to stay for as long as you can afford. Find out about special packages at www.disneyland.com;I hope you have more luck sorting out the Summer 2006 packages than I did.

San Deigo, Pacific Paradise SAN DIEGO often tops the list of The World's Best Cities to Live, so it's no wonder the smiling citizens are so happy to share their affluent lifestyles with tourists in search of sun,fun, surf and shopping. It is, indeed, almost too good to be true. In spite of its high proportion of Latin American immigrants ( the Mexican Border is just down the road) I didn't see anything to compare with the run-down, no-go areas around, say, Miami, in spite of the fact that we got lost a few times in the network of roads traversing the city.

As usual in a city new to us, we took the best-available narrated tour, in this case the hop-on-off Old Town Trolley Tour - which took in all the sights - the intriguing Gaslamp Quarter, the pristine Downtown area, the vast Harbour packed with rowboats and aircraft carriers,the famous Zoo and Sea World plus my highlight of the tour - a stopover at the iconic luxury beachside Hotel Del Coronado. The Del, as it was known to Hollywood stars on wild weekend visits, was the location of Marilyn Monroe's 'Florida' beach scenes in Some like it Hot so I even contemplated booking a room there for our San Diego stay.

After hours of painstaking research, I chose the delights of another celebrity favourite, the multi-award-winning La Valencia Hotel in the San Diego suiburb of La Jolla. In old Spanish, La Jolla (La Hoy-ya) means jewel and La Valencia is its crown. I have rarely stayed in a hotel which scores ten out of 10 in every department - a fantastic location overlooking La Jolla Cove; top-class professional service; really good food, including the best al fresco Sunday Brunch we have EVER enjoyed in a lifetime of travel; a spectacular pool and immaculate gardens.

It is also right in the middle of a lovely village of shops, galleries and cafes packed with characters and polite University of California students. Nearby is the classy golf course of Torrey Pines where you can follow in the pawmarks of Tiger Woods who triumphed there during our stay.

The hotel's club-like Whaling Bar and Grill is always packed with locals while foodies travel from all over the planet to dine in style at the exclusive Sky Room, with its panoramas of sunsets over the Cove. I recommend "La V" to all discerning travellers who want to sample the Southern California lifestyle at its best. Go immediately to www.lavalencia.com to get the flavour of one of the world's best hotels. When you book, tell them I insisted you ask for an ocean view!

Animal magic, California style SAN DIEGO's tourism fame is centred on two great animal attractions, the magnificent Zoo and SeaWorld which deserve a full day each. You should make time to go museum hopping in Balboa Park, pub-crawling in the revitalised Gaslamp Quarter and wandering around the fascinating Old Town. What a super city! The Zoo has 3,000 animals in beautifully landscaped surroundings. There were still too many cages for my liking but it has established a 2,000 acre free-range Wild Animal Park to the west of the city. I enjoyed my upper-deck safari bus-ride that gave me my first-ever eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with a giraffe, but I couldn't 'spot' their famous pandas... I came away a bit disappointed as my expectations were high. However, all zoo lovers here have to thank San Diego Zoo's on-going breeding and conservation programmes for having helped restock European zoological gardens after WWII as most animals had been killed ( and often, alas, eaten: you must have heard of 'pommes lion-aise?#39;). SeaWorld is a different kettle of fish, so to speak. It is a supremely professional, highly commercial, operation which whizzes you from one flawless performance arena to another, showcasing the talents of trained animals. I could not believe the tricks that cats can do! In my 20 years of cat ownership I couldn't train them to stay off my bloody armchair, never mind fetch my slippers. Star of the show is the clever killer whale Shamu. Can this be the same Shamu I saw in SeaWorld Florida? He does the same tricks but seems smaller. For me the real stars are the manatees, those sad-looking sea-cows that have been injured by stupid jet-skiiers and have to be kept in tanks to protect them. I watched them for an hour. Lovely gardens and lots of specialist aquariums add to the quality of the experience. Also the air is permeated with the appetising scents from the open air hickory barbecue pits. I couldn't wait to wolf down my platter of pork ribs. Somehow it didn't seem right to eat fish at SeaWorld...

Desert city of surprises BEFORE I arrived in Palm Springs, an oasis of affluence in the dusty deserts of Southern California, the only thing I knew about it was that Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope used to hibernate there between farewell tours. Now it's packed to its palm-fringed rafters with retired bank managers and former sports stars keeping arthritis at bay in the desert heat and, apparently, lots of living celebs.

Alas, the rich and famous hide behind the gates of the compounds and private country clubs that line every canyon road of the city. Many Hollywood stars take weekend vacations here, including Brad & Angelina plus our own Liam Neeson who is fond of the ultra-luxurious Parker Meridien Resort. Our choice was the excellent Hilton Resort Palm Springs where we had a mini-suite (that's American mini, meaning very spacious indeed) featuring everything from fluffy white bathrobes to easy-peasy wireless broadband ( wi-fi). It was comforting to listen to The Archers on my laptop while lying in the hot sun watching desert vultures circling along the ridges of the snow-capped San Jacinto mountains just a few miles away. We had intended to do a lot of dining out during our six-day stay, but the food in the hotel's Terrace Restaurant turned out to be such value that we stayed put.

Also, our Czech waiter Thomas was so interesting that I could hardly wait to hear nightly instalments of his life story. I learned a lot about how Palm Springs, a tiny oasis of palms in the arid valley of Coachella, became a world-class destination from another great storyteller - Morgan Wind-in-her-Hair, my fast-talking, ultra-knowledgeable native American guide who drove me on a superlative half-day Desert Adventure Jeep Tour. (www.red-jeep.com ). This tour was, perhaps, the natural highlight of my Southern California sojurn, simply because ( unlike a zoo or a good brunch) I could not have enjoyed it anywhere else in the world. I mean, it's not every day of the week that I can pan for real nuggets at a California Gold Rush mine, follow the fresh tracks of a wild mountain lion and stand in a fissure of the San Andreas Fault, all before lunchtime. Not in Bangor West anyhow. The 446 surviving members of the Agua Caliente ( Hot Water) tribe own half of Palm Springs and all of its Casinos, plus some of America's biggest grape, celery, lettuce and date farms. This makes them the richest Indians in the US. Ironically, the place only became important after it was settled by an Ulster-Scots lawyer called Tom McCallum whose 1884 adobe ( mud) cabin is preserved in the downtown Village Green.

High and mighty THREE OTHER unique attractions make Palm Springs much more than just a hang-out for gays (if you pardon the expression), and golfers (there are 20 great public courses to choose from as well as some very private ones) and conference delegates. The Aerial Tramway whisked me up 6000 ft in 11 minutes from the hot desert floor to the frozen snowfields of the San Jacinto Wilderness State Park. The view from the revolving cable-car is stupendous - the whole of Palm Springs stretches out below like a big brown chessboard, with blue swimming pools and green golf courses sprinkled around. I stepped out at the Mountain Station terminus to a blast of icy air that made me regret that I had left my winter woollies back home; the temperature drops 40 degrees in that short ride - the equivalent of motoring from Mexico to Northern Ontario! The Living Desert is one of the few purely family attractions in the region - a totally delightful not-for-profit combination of zoo, botanical gardens and the world's largest model train layout. I was most interested in the native desert animals and plants, but I really enjoyed its new butterfly house and the wittily-named Giraffic Park. I askled why, unlike other tourist attractions, the place closes at 1.30pm in summer: "It gets to be over 100 degrees here so all of the animals - and most of us volunteers - take a nap till dusk" Joshua Tree National Park is a full day excursion away - the most popular area of is the lowland Wonderland of Rocks, although the biggest of its weirdly shaped trees which were made famous by U2's Joshua Tree album are at Covington. BY John Trew