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
designedby 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:
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