It was the summer of 1985 and the Salmons got out ahead of the Griswald family on a European vacation. We owned our first SLR film camera, an Olympus OM10 with a fixed 50mm lens. Over 30 years later, we sent the negatives off to Scancafe to be converted to digital format.
Here begins our photo tour and trip log. Click on the individual sections for more photos than you probably want to look at.
This trip was partially planned out in advance with bookings made through AYH
(American Youth Hostels, Inc.). AYH had something called the "European Spotlight
Tour" which gave us 2-3 days accomodation in each of a collection of cities,
a rail pass to get
between places, as well as a few bonus items like entrance to museums or play or
opera tickets in some cities. We were otherwise free to do what we wanted within
the given framework.
We began and ended our journey in London. Full of museums and plays and other interesting things, we had far too few days in this awesome city.
We travelled by hovercraft across the English Channel to France and made our way to Paris. John dusted off his high school French for communications, while Lynn adopted the phrase "je ne comprends pas" whenever spoken to in French.
Summer is a great time for travel in Switzerland as winter skiing destinations turn into picturesque landscapes with plentiful hiking opportunities. And, the hostels were among the most lux and comfortable of any during our summer visit.
Leaving Switzerland, we took a long, uncomfortable, overnight train to Venice, Italy and arrived in the early morning. Italy in August is hot and crowded, and our hostel accomodation was not only unairconditioned but had its windows nailed shut to avoid people jumping or throwing stuff into the canals. After overnighting, we cut our Italy time short and headed to Austria.
We found a B&B in Vienna for a couple nights before transferring to our reserved AYH hostel. Both were comfortable, and we thouroughly enjoyed the extra couple of days we got to explore the attractions in Vienna.
Next up, Germany, with stops in Munich, Heidelberg, and Bacharach.
That's about it. We finished up our trip with a stop in Amsterdam before retuning to London and flying home.
Lynn and John Salmon <>{