This was the CP Empress of Canada that Ted Davis and I sailed to Liverpool from Montreal in September of 1966.  It was a 29,500 ton vessel and had stabilizers underneath the waterline.  However, we encountered the tail end of a hurricane when we reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  The waves were some 45 feet high and the ship rolled so badly that the stabilizers broke free at the surface.  90% of the passengers and 50% of the crew were seasick.


This was a Scottish castle turned into a youth hostel that Ted and I stayed at.  We hitched up to Scotland from Liverpool and went through Edinburgh and Inverness up to Tongue, then down the west side to Glasgow.  We hitched past Loch Lomond on the way to Glasgow.  I later found out that my mother's side came from Inverness.


Then we heard about the Octoberfest in Munich and so we headed south to Liverpool and caught the train to London where we stayed in a youth hostel for a couple of days and toured the town.  This is Piccadilly Circus.  We then took a train which rode the ferry that crossed the English Channel from Dover to Calais and then continued onto Munich.


Ted and I got to Munich and soon spent the rest of our money at the Octoberfest.  I then got a job at an American Army base called McGraw Kaserne or something like that washing dishes and serving food to patients in the hospital.  I got about 650 Deutsch marks a month as well as a room to sleep in and some meals.  Ted got a survey job with an American firm in Munich.


This is the exterior of the beer drinker's shrine - the Hofbrau Haus.  It was over 900 years old in 1966!


Here is a shot of the interior, showing all the happy beer drinkers.  They had a little umpa band in the corner of the room which played Bavarian beer drinking songs and greatly livened up the place.  I loved the German food served here, especially the roast pork hock and dumplings.

In the spring of 1967, another Canadian (Rick Hammer) and I hitched down to Italy on our way to the Middle East.  Ted went back to Canada with a German girl (Gertrude) that he met and married.  This is the first big Italian town Rick and I came to - Bolzano.  I remember my first experience with Italian plumbing here when I went to a lavatory in a train station.  There was only a hole in the cement with no water or toilet paper!


We went to Venice next and I was really impressed with the ancient streets and buildings there.  The sea water was very high when we were there and I remember drinking beer in a pub where there was about 4 or 5 inches of salt water on the floor as we sat on bar stools.


We next went to Rome via Florence and saw the Roman coliseum here as well as the Appian Way and the Vatican.  We then hitched down to Naples and then went to Brindisi to take the ferry to Greece.


We walked around the Parthenon that is on top of the Acropolis in Athens and were much impressed with its antiquity.  I understand that tourists have for many years now no longer been allowed to walk in the structure like we did.  I think the concern is for its structural integrity due to the effects of acid rain.


Rick and I got a ride with a circus into Istanbul where we saw many interesting sites including the Blue Mosque shown here and an ancient covered bazaar called the Grand Bazaar where the Turks sold all manner of goods, including Turkish mersham pipes that some used to smoke hash with.


Rick and I hitched through Ankara to Lebanon where we saw this ancient castle called the Fortress of Byblos built in 1108.
We continued on down to Beruit and then east to Damascus, then south to Aman and west past the Dead Sea to the West Bank of Palestine and onto Jerusalem.  We were advised to return to Beruit if we wanted to go on to Egypt rather than go through Israel.  We did that and then the 6 Day War started between Israel and the Arab nations.  We got a flight out to Athens from Beruit.


Rick had met an English girl, Lany, in Jerusalem.  She came back to Munich with Rick and I.  Then, after I got some money from home, we headed off to Spain through Baden Baden, Bern (shown here) and Geneva, Switzerland.  We got a ride into Bern with a Swiss girl who bought us supper and a hotel room for the night.  She was completely fascinated with our freedom to travel about the world.


From Geneva, we hitch hiked west through Lyon, France and onto Pamplona, Spain.


The three of us stayed at a campsite in Plamplona where we drank copious quantities of red wine that cost  6.25 pesetos or about 10 cents a litre. Each morning a siren would go off about 7 am to signal the start of the running of the bulls.  We never managed to get up in time to participate in the event - just as well, maybe...  From here, we went to Barcelona and then onto Narbonne at the French border.  From there we hitched to Paris.


I went up the Eiffel Tower elevator and I remember some Americans mistaking me for a German because of the clothing I was wearing and then talking about me as though they thought I didn't understand English.  I was so embarrassed I carried on as though I didn't understand them.  When Rick and Lany caught up to me, we toured the Louvre where I remember seeing many Eygptian artifacts brought back to France by Napoleon as well as a famous painting called Whistler's Mother and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.  I parted company with Rick and Lany and headed east to Luxembourg to try to get a flight to New York for $160..


I slept under this bridge when I got to Luxembourg.  However, when I went to check the airfare, I didn't have enough money for the fare so I hitched onto to Brussels, Belgium and then north to Rotterdam, Holland to try and get a working ride on a ship.