Europe 1984

If you can't be bothered with the text, which I mostly wrote for my own benefit, scroll down to the first picture, click or tap it and then scroll through all the pictures by swiping or hitting forward arrow.

This was a big trip for Karen and I, a long (three-week) vacation, with an ambitious itinerary, and our first trip to Italy. But it was what happened immediately before and immediately after – not entirely unrelated – that made it...momentous, a watershed in our lives.

On the morning of our departure, 4 May 1984, we were woken early by a phone call from Ian Whittaker’s friend, Marion Korn. Ian had died in the night. He had been sick with cancer for a few years. We knew he would die, but were still somehow in denial. It was too disturbing, this sudden intimation that death could come for anyone, even someone close to us, even someone as young as we were. So Marion's call was a gut punch.

Should we have cancelled our trip, stayed home and gone to our friend’s funeral? Probably. But Marion urged us not to. Ian wouldn’t have wanted us to miss an opportunity to travel, she said. And that is probably true, he was a great traveller himself. So we went. (As it turned out there was no conventional funeral.)

It was a sad setting out, and the weather in Europe that spring mirrored our mood perfectly. It rained everywhere and was several degrees cooler than the seasonal averages. We bought an umbrella in France, a new jacket for me in Portofino on the Italian Riviera, and rubber wellies (bright yellow) for Karen in Venice. It was an unfortunate introduction to Italy.

The photographic record for this trip is only partial. It looks as if the first few days, all of our time in France, is completely missing. (Some photos were damaged in our damp basement on West Mile and thrown out, probably the fate of these shots.) And for the next few days of the trip (Monaco, Portofino, Florence), I was mostly shooting slide film. I have some, though not all, the slides, but no means at the moment of scanning them. We do have a fairly complete record of the last couple of weeks in Italy.

We’re pretty sure we remember the itinerary correctly. We flew to Paris, took the train to Toulon on the south coast. I remember coming out of the train station in Toulon, a not terrifically attractive port city, and feeling very disappointed and a little lost. We took a cab to our bed and breakfast, which was well out of the centre, up a hill in the suburbs. By the time we’d checked in, we were starving.

We started walking back down towards the centre in search of a restaurant. We came to a funny little place, partly built below grade on a slope. It was well after the lunch hour and the place was empty, but we went in anyway and asked if they could feed us. They could, and they brought us a meal, a cassoulet, that Karen and I still remember, and rave about. It was just a slightly spicy southern-style stew with beans and sausage and chicken – no seafood, thankfully – served with crusty bread. But it was magnificent, and it put us in an altogether better frame of mind.

We took delivery of a rental car, probably the next day in Toulon, and drove the Corniche, the old cliff-top highway that winds along the south coast of France. Karen was car sick, of course. We dipped into Cannes, Cap d’Antibes and other famous Riviera towns. We spent a night in Nice. I seem to remember visiting a cemetery, where somebody famous was buried.

The next night, we were in Monaco. Karen remembers we went to a casino and she won a jackpot on a one-arm bandit – but had bet so little that the pay-off wasn’t huge. I remember we visited a desert garden built on a slope overlooking the sea. We parked the car that night on a cul-de-sac below our hotel room window – and woke next morning to find it stranded in the middle of a bustling street market. We couldn’t leave until the market ended later in the morning.

We left Monaco – without ever catching sight of Prince Rainier or Princess Grace – and drove into Italy, along the Ligurian coast, past Genoa, to a little place we’d heard about called Portofino, a fishing village turned yachter’s haven. It is, or was, a beautiful spot. There were woody cliff walks around a headland with views back to the tiny, impossibly pretty harbour. Alas, most of the pictures I took there appear to be among the missing. In a little yacht outfitter's on the front, I bought a green cotton jacket that I loved and was still occasionally wearing 20 years later.

I’m pretty sure we went next to Florence, where we dropped the car. From that point on, we would take trains. I have few clear memories of that time in Florence, although I’m pretty sure we went to the Uffizi Gallery. We went back seven years later with Caitlin, which muddies our memories somewhat. The exact order of the itinerary from that point is less certain, but there is no doubt about the places we went.

Florence...I think

Florence, Ponte Vecchio

Florence - I think it's the Uffizi Gallery from the other side of the Arno

Was Rome next? That seems a logical route. We didn’t like Rome. The weather was abysmal. In the pictures, Karen is wearing or carrying a green leather jacket of mine that I’d ceded to her once I had my Portofino wind breaker – because she had nothing else warm enough. And she’s carrying the multi-coloured umbrella we bought in France. The sky is always overcast. In one picture, she’s holding the umbrella over her head. She’s not smiling in many. We certainly followed the tourist track, or some of it, but it was hard to enjoy. About the only thing I can remember us liking was the pizza.

Colosseum cat

In the Colosseum

Rome, Colosseum in background

Rome...not sure where

She wears different shoes for touring these days

Rome...not sure where. The beloved purse Karen bought in Florence.

Rome, somewhere in the Forum, I think

No idea, but Rome, I think

Rome, Spanish Steps from Via dei Condotti

Rome, Trevi Fountain

We might have gone next to Venice, or more likely it was then that we headed south by train to Naples. The only attraction of Naples, then, was that it was where you caught the ferry to Ischia. We had booked a few nights in a small hotel on the island. Ischia, off the Neapolitan coast, is a kind of poor man’s Capri. It was there we finally found the sun and had some beach time.

Karen, who says she travels on her stomach, fondly remembers two culinary introductions on Ischia, both of which long remained favourites. One was Italian gelatto – well, no-brainer! The other was tortellini al panna, little pasta pockets filled with cheese or meat and vegetables, swimming in a cream sauce. The next time we came to Italy, we ordered it everywhere.

Ischia, beach near our hotel

Ischia, no idea where

Ischia...or possibly somewhere else

Ischia, no idea where

One day, we either sought out or happened upon a religious festival which, based on the date, the oracle tells me must have been La Festa di Santa Restituta, a celebration – and re-enactment – of the saint’s landing on Ischia. There was a parade, our first of many such we’ve witnessed since in southern, Catholic places. Gaudy, but picturesque.

Ischia, Festa Festa di Santa Restituta

Festa di Santa Restituta - tired toy merchant's daughter

Our most vivid memory of Ischia is the ferry ride back to Naples. It was a very rough crossing – not stormy, but with a major swell. Karen and I were on the edge of losing our breakfast most of the journey. Others weren’t as lucky. I had heard about but never seen projectile vomiting. We saw it more than once on that trip. I remember the relief we felt being back on dry land, standing on the dock, but also how wobbly and drained we felt.

We took the train up the coast to Pompei and spent a day there. We went again a couple of years ago and I was astonished at how the place had changed. I remembered it in 1984 as being at the end of a dirt road that we walked along from the train station, where we found a single guard sitting under the sky on a chair at a gate into the site. There were hardly any visitors – and this was May. When we went back in 2018, it was March, and it was overrun with tourists. The entrance area – areas; there are several – are now major architectural installations, with state-of-the-art electronic entry systems. Things change in 35 years.

Karen finds a new friend

Roman bath

My Latin is a little rusty...

One of Donald Trump's ancestors possibly

When we went back 35 years later, this kind of display was long gone to museums or store rooms

Tired tourist

At first, I thought this was ancient porn...but what's she doing to him?

I think it's Pompei, but could also be the Roman Forum

From there, we would have trained to Venice. I remember arriving at the station in Venice. I had to go and buy our tickets north and left Karen alone in the rotunda for a few moments with the bags. When I came back, she was being hassled by a very shady-looking street arab. He hightailed it when I showed up, but I remember being shaken by how vulnerable Karen seemed, how young-looking. If it had been at home, she would have just told him to eff off, but there, she was intimidated.

Venice was another disaster weather-wise – and accommodation-wise. The hotel we had booked, right on the basin, stuck us in a pokey attic room with only a skylight, and pretended it was all they had available. The bathroom, Karen remembers, which was up a few steps, was also the shower. When you showered, the water leaked under the door and down the steps to the carpet, which was, not surprisingly, moldy. In the end we checked out and found a pension just down the street where the accommodation was much better, and cost less.

The weather was dreadful, though. The people at the hotel said it was very unusual, but we noticed all the shops had umbrellas and slickers ready to hand, which they brought out front to sell to tourists. It rained most of the time. We could see how beautiful the place was, but as with Rome, it was difficult to enjoy. It was so wet, we ended up buying Karen a pair of rubber wellies to tramp through the flooded streets.

Grand Canal from bridge

View across basin to Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

Palazzo on Grand Canal

Our attic cubbyhole

View from hotel room of vaporetto stops and Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

My best impression of Alfred E. Neuman. (Whoever took the picture apparently didn't realize you had to focus first. Note the green jacket, purchased in Portofino - and what appears to be a female gondolier passing in the background.)

Saint Mark's Basilica - mosaic above door

From Venice we headed – I think, via Milan – back to Paris. There was a strike of train employees in France that played havoc with our schedule. There were long delays – I can remember sitting in a station somewhere for hours. At one point, the train from Italy dumped us in a small town in Switzerland because there was no French crew to take over when we got to the border. We had to get off and walk into town to find a hotel. This was about nine o’clock at night. The next day, we got back on the train – but a different train than the one we’d booked. The French train employees must have been doing work slow-downs or rotating strikes, because we did get into France this time.

We had intended staying overnight near the airport, and then flying out the next day. So now it was the day of our flight, and it was touch-and-go whether we would get to the airport in time. The train was jammed, with passengers standing in the aisles. We sat in the same seats we had been assigned on the train we’d been on the day before. Trouble is, somebody else was booked in those seats for this train. When they got on somewhere in France, I’m ashamed to confess that we pretended not to be able to speak or understand French and insisted they were our seats, showing them our (yesterday’s) tickets as proof. In the end, they gave up and we kept the seats.

When we got to the airport – I think it was Charles de Gaulle – it was pandemonium. The terminal we were in had only recently opened. There was a huge ragged crowd around the Air Canada desk. We couldn’t get near the counter. We finally found somebody and told them our flight was leaving...soon! They said, “Follow me,” and we sprinted through the airport, carrying our bags. (Thank goodness we travelled light in those days.) We made it, barely.

They had given our seats away, though, so now they had to bump a couple of stand-by passengers who had thought they were flying. They bumped the last two, reasonably enough, but they had been assigned seats several rows apart. In the end, the guy sitting next to Karen offered to switch so we could sit together.

The conversation started on the plane. It was very emotional. Karen, I was astonished to discover, was wavering on her long-held resolve to remain childless. I had never been adamantly for or against. It was Karen’s call. So would we start a family? The next night, back home in Toronto, at one of our favourite restaurants, Downstairs at Fenton’s on Gloucester St., after another emotional conversation, the decision was reached. Yes, we would!

And eight-and-a-half months later, our little premie Caitlin popped out. Surprise!

Monday 27 April 2020