Welcoming springtime 2009, many seniors are already booking travel schedules. What could be more meaningful than a visit to France’s colorful Normandy region? Today it offers beautiful scenery, quaint historic towns and other great tourist delights. Many yesterdays ago, for those few of us still around who can remember back 65 years to D-Day on June 6, 1944, Normandy means nostalgia tinged with sadness.

On that day, I was more than 6,000 miles away at the Navy base on Treasure Island, California, an 18-year-old crew member of a Navy troop transport. We were soon to head out to the Pacific, where we'd land GIs in the Philippines in October 1944, and Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa early in 1945.

We knew what was ahead for us, and could relate to the GIs who struggled ashore in Normandy on June 6. Aboard our ship, we listened intently to news reports as the American, British and Free French troops fought their way inland toward Paris.

My first reaction when asked about bike trails in Las Vegas was: who the heck takes time from the casinos to ride bikes in Sin City? It's difficult to envision gamblers getting up early in the morning to ride their Schwinns along the traffic-choked, high-rise Las Vegas Boulevard. However, Las Vegas is much more than the Strip, and has become the fastest growing bedroom city in the U.S. throughout the past 20 years.

First of all, it is actually possible to ride bikes on the Strip and downtown Fremont Street areas. In fact, the city has squads of bicycle cops who roam areas day and night where squad cars can't venture. They're very effective in preventing street crime, as well as herding the city's millions of visitors safely as they make their way around Sin City.

Can you remember when music was a joy for the ears, rather than a pain in the ears and elsewhere. Las Vegas is a treasure trove of old-fashioned jazz joints where you can see and hear the real stuff, in the mode of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane. The good joints are just too numerous to list, so I'll try to give a few favorites of mine and those recommended by old Vegas friends who live in Sin City and appreciate jazz.

My first choice is a place where Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung would probably hang out if they could have solved the space-time continuum and get themselves to the present time. The Las Vegas Hilton offers "Group Therapy Thursdays" at the hotel's Tempo Lounge. Ja, are you listening, mein freunds?

I first passed through Las Vegas in 1946 on my way home from World War II. Our troop train stopped there for about an hour, and with several other sailors, I wandered up Fremont Street, past sleazy bars, one hotel and three or four small casinos. Not very impressive.

The next time I visited Las Vegas was just seven years later. As a Reservist, I had been recalled for Navy active duty in 1951 and served for two years. A college friend was the public relations director of the Sands Hotel, which had opened just a year before, and he offered me a free week when I returned from the Pacific. When I arrived in Las Vegas, this time by TWA, I was amazed by the dramatic change in the town, especially with new high-rise luxury resorts going up on the famed Strip at the time.