Best Place to Day-dream About Faraway Places With Strange-Sounding Names

First thing you do is check the "Ship Traffic" column in the daily newspaper (usually in the business section). Pick a cruise liner or container ship to your liking -- hm, the Maersk bound for Japan sounds good -- catch a bus to the toll plaza, and position yourself in the middle of the span in plenty of time to watch the ship of your choosing approach. You'll see people on the deck below, waving and blowing kisses; wave back. You want to be among them, leaving your life behind and embarking on adventures unknown; that's a given. Put Japan out of your mind and let your projective imagination run wild: Are those lucky souls bound for Dakar? Karachi? Rio de Janeiro? This is an especially daydreamy enterprise just past dusk, when the ship's alight from stem to stern and there's a suggestion of maracas in the air.