Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days, 1988

Phileas Fogg bet his fellow members of the Reform Club that he could circle the globe, and the BBC sent Michael Palin to repeat it. Setting off from Pall Mall, he noted that he left one hundred and fifteen years, three hundred and fifty-six days and ten and three-quarter hours after Fogg. The one rule was no aircraft. The club is a private members' club, so this is a place to see from the street.

On Day 3 the director thought it would be nice for Palin to see Venice from the back of a rubbish barge, so he found himself hosing down the Riva degli Schiavoni with a crew led by Mario, 48. Two doors from his lunch spot he looked up at the house where Marco Polo lived. That evening the cameras left not from a postcard quay but from the docks of the Stazione Marittima, aboard the Espresso Egitto, home for four days.

Visitor guidance: The Riva degli Schiavoni is a public waterfront promenade.

After landing at Alexandria, where the map entry calls the Corniche his first taste of Africa, Palin went on to Cairo, watched Sporting Cairo play Al Minya and reached the Pyramids on Day 8. His verdict: they preserve an unmoving dignity, like great beasts surrounded by insects.

Visitor guidance: The Giza pyramid complex is open to visitors.

At the Creek in Dubai Palin had his first sight of a dhow, and he left on the Al Shama, out onto the Persian Gulf. Days later the captain announced the Big Sea: no land south of them until Antarctica. Anwar, the crewman, heard Brahms and declared it great disco. In Bombay on Day 25 Palin wrote that it was almost impossible to accept that he would never see the crew again.

Visitor guidance: Dubai Creek can be seen from its banks.

Palin reached Hong Kong on Day 41 and, owing to an error in the BBC computer, was met by a Rolls-Royce. In Kowloon he was attacked by a cockatoo in the bird market, and at Sam's Tailors a suit could be made overnight, though the sleeves took a little longer. He crossed to Hong Kong Island on the Star Ferry, remarking that locals call such weather millionaire's weather.

Location precision: The map entries name Kowloon, the bird market and the harbour but no addresses; the pin marks Kowloon.

On Day 45 Palin was up at 6.15 under a misty half-light over the Pearl River, bound for Shanghai. A railwayman, Mr Cha, told him the train had thirteen stops on its 35-hour, 1822-kilometre run. Mr Cha had worked the railways for more than twenty years and, leaving the train, gave Palin his cap badge as a memento.

Visitor guidance: Guangzhou railway station is a working station open to ticket holders.

Palin bedded down in a capsule hotel in Tokyo. Then came the 11-day Pacific crossing to Long Beach, and on Day 59 an initiation ceremony for crossing the Date Line, run by crew in handmade robes with the chief officer as Neptune's High Priest. Palin noted that he didn't remember Phileas Fogg ever having to go through this.

Location precision: The capsule hotel is not named and the Date Line ceremony took place at sea; the pin marks Tokyo.

December arrived in Aspen, Colorado. At six in the morning, in the municipal car park, two balloons, The Rat and The Unicorn, were being assembled. Balloons are the form of transport everyone connects with Around the World in Eighty Days, yet Jules Verne never mentions them. Palin climbed aboard The Unicorn with pilot Jake, knowing he had to catch the California Zephyr that afternoon.

Location precision: The sources name the municipal car park but not its address; the pin marks Aspen.

Seventy-nine days and seven hours after leaving, Palin and his crew were back at the Reform Club on 12 December 1988. Unfortunately, they would not be let in: the club said it would disturb the members, so the trip ended on the steps outside. Sunrise at Felixstowe had already brought him almost home.