Category: Venice

March 27, 1963 - Traveling to the Hostel on a Gondola

3/27/2011

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Venice is fantastic. It was built on 118 islands in the middle of a bay. You must park your car at the edge and get around by sidewalks, gondolas and ferrys. There is nothing like taking a boat to your hostel.

Pasta is the food here, If you stand up, the food and wine are cheap. Wine or vermouth is only 8 cents US and a plate of lasagna, pizza or spaghetti is just 20 to 35 cents. Cheap but fattening.

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A daily diary of a journey in 1962. Please post comments about where you were then on the Background page.

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

In the face of all of this, Pat, Judy and I blithely took off for Europe with the intention of traveling through Europe and North Africa until our money ran out. We had a travel guide and a book titled Europe on $5.00 a Day. Since we had all read The Ugly American in preparation for the trip, we thought we were very smart to buy a used Volkswagen with Dutch license plates. We dubbed the car "Louie" since a cute guy from Switzerland named Louie had helped us acquire it.

There was no such thing as a cell phone, a computer, Twitter or Facebook. Our parents didn't hear from us for weeks on end. We wrote regularly, but letters took forever to deliver and we only vaguely knew where we would be next. It was a very cold winter and we followed the sun.

March 27, 1963 - Traveling to the Hostel on a Gondola

1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

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