Europe - Early Summer 1994

Troy and I moved in to an apartment together on Halloween Day 1993. We spent the end of that winter planning a backpacking trip through Europe. We stayed with Troy's grandparents for the month of April to save rent money and sold my Ford Escort and some of Troy's musical gear as we needed to fund a 5 1/2 week trip. We had a fabulous time! We arrived in Amsterdam and had our eyes opened to the Red Light District (we didn't partake, but walking the area was definitely interesting!). We then traveled by train to Paris, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and back down to the south of France. I fell in love with Menton, right on the eastern edge of the Cote d'Azur. It was also here where we had some of our money stolen from our little tent one afternoon. You can tell we were real planners as we didn't have return tickets and had only purchased one way! We ended up calling my father, Rick, and he purchased our flight home for us (before 9/11 you could do these things). We stayed a total of 37 days - all but two of those nights in a tent. It rained for 5 straight days in Germany and our closest acquaintance was a huge snail we named Jake. We met an incredible man, "Bomber," in Germany as well. He had participated in the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, 7 straight years. What an amazing life that man had, a true inspiration -- and he was a celebrity look-alike to Sam Elliott! We also celebrated both Troy's birthday (May 2nd) and mine (May 26th) while traveling.

I think that's when we got struck with the Travel Bug. We ended up going back to Europe two more times and had many driving and sailing adventures, too. Those stories to come...

lco