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38 FOCUS - OCTOBER 2015 I have had the pleasure of spending the past 40 years travelling to hundreds of interesting locales and have learned a few ins and outs about travel but that certainly was not the case when I initially started. One of my rst adventures was a whirlwind trip through Europe on a coach with 30 of my new best friends. I was young and naive and because I was born in Europe and had visited ve or six countries thought of myself as a world traveller. Little did I know. My adventure started in London where I made mistake number one I rented a car. After four hours of trying to nd Hampton Court which included driving on Tower Bridge on the wrong side hitting a man on a scooter and looking the wrong way in a trafc circle I nally made it totally frazzled. I left London and boarded the ferry to cross the North Sea with no concept of how rough the water could be. Three hours of non-stop up and downs sideway rolls and food not wishing to stay in my stomach I nally set foot on the continent. I then started my tour of seven countries in 14 days I discovered that a 14 day tour is really only 12 days with one day arriving and one day departing. The trip began in Amsterdam with a quick canal cruise and a visit to the Rijksmuseum. The company I chose was a tourist class outt and I soon learned that tourist class meant budget class something which in Europe means a whole lot less than it does in North America. The coach travelled along the Rhine with a stop at Lorelei for a short boat cruise. Our guide Franco was Italian and it turned out that he along with his brother owned the company and this was their rst tour. To make matters more frustrating his English was terrible. The group I was with was very international. We had a few people from Iran who spoke no English several from Nairobi a couple of Americans some English folks and two from India. Francos readiness to speak Italian was lost as there were was no one there from Italy. We continued through Switzerland and found ourselves in a mountainous snowstorm as we crossed the Gotthard Pass. Visibility was so limited and the steep slopes so scary that a woman began to cry which of course led to uneasiness by everyone else. Finally we made it to the bottom of the Alps and by now I was thoroughly confused with the currency. This was prior to the Euro at a time when passport entry to each country A beautiful view of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo.