Grand Tour of Europe

In 1988, I travelled overseas for 7 months with my (now) ex husband and our trip was designed into six sections:

Section 1:
26th March - 23rd April
London, England, Wales & Scotland

Section 2:
24th April - 19th May
Paris, Ile de France & Loire Valley

Section 3:
20th May - 23rd June
Rhône-Alps, Italy, Venice & Burgundy

Section 4:
24th June - 2nd August
N-Europe, Scandinavia & Germany

Section 5:
4th August - 9th September
Provence, Aquitaine, Charente & Brittany

Section 6:
10th September - 30th October
S.E.Europe, Greece & Egypt

Map designed by C. Newman

There were so many places we wanted to see and we crammed in as much as we could on each day. Maintaining a balanced approach, we also made allowance for more restful and relaxed days, particularly well timed after a heavy touring schedule. We realised we could not go full bore every day for 7 months. We had prebooked much of our accommodation in advance before we left Australia so we would not waste valuable time finding accommodation and used that time instead to maximise our sightseeing opportunities. There were definite advantages to this and the main disadvantage was that when we really liked a place, we could not alter our itinerary and extend our stay due to prearranged commitments to other places of accommodation. It certainly kept us on our toes and we made the most of every minute of every day.

You will notice from 12th June that the "journal" entries cease and the remainder of the trip is recorded on postcards sent to C's parents who kept the postcards and gave them back to us on our return. The reason for the change in format was due to the amount of time we needed to set aside each night to write, and after 2 months of travel, I was finding our diary had become more of a chore as we were often very tired by the end of a long day of touring and sightseeing. And not only were we writing in our journal every day, we were also spending time repeating information in postcards. To save time, we decided to record our travel notes on postcards only, hence the change in format from that point on for the remainder of our trip. Not in as much detail as our journal but a record of sorts nonetheless.

Because of our long trip that year, we had three summers in a row and missed one Australian winter altogether. That wasn't too hard to take - LOL.

I have divided our travel journal into months for greater clarity:

• March 1988
• April 1988
• May 1988
• June 1988
• July 1988
• August 1988
• September 1988
• October 1988