09-01 Europe 1954

It seemed that Dad felt Ian needed to attend a school with more discipline, so he asked me, in the summer of 1954, to take Ian to Ireland to the Royal Belfast Academic Institution, or Inst., which he attended as a child. But first, he paid for a two-week Cook’s Tour of Europe out of Amsterdam.
We went across the ocean on the SS Yohan Van Oldenbarnveldt out of Montreal. Our little cabin, with pipes running across the ceiling, did not even have its own washroom. Oh well, we were young. But at every meal, they served vegetable marrow, one of the few foods I cannot stomach.
We landed in Rotterdam and took a train to Amsterdam and checked into our hotel a day before the tour. Then off we went to Marken, a favourite tourist venue. It was a town on an island isolated from the mainland where people wore traditional Dutch costumes and wooden shoes. The people were very good looking, but huge in stature.
I have often looked at the photo of the three beautiful Dutch children who today would be in their 60s. Ian and I both wore Canada pins, and that made us very welcome everywhere we went in Holland. The Dutch love Canadians.
We met all the folks on our bus tour which included 18 gals who had just graduated from the University of Melbourne. I showed them all Mary’s picture, which Ian thought was a rather stupid idea.
We did Paris and Ian can be seen in front of L’Opera getting a few moments of culture. Every hotel we stayed at had a five-star class rating. We had no idea father had sent us around Europe first class.
And, can you beat Italy with the gondolas of Venice, the history, the architecture everywhere? Venice, however, smelled like a sewer because it was a sewer. Ian made friends with Franz, the bus driver, and went off carousing every night. He was only 17 but looked 19.
Being a highly educated person, I immediately remembered a line from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice when I saw the famous Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal. “What news on the Rialto?”
A wonderful memory was our night in Baden Baden where Germans come for holidays and their famous baths. It also had a casino. At around 3 am, Ian came in totally pissed, and stood emptying his pockets of crumpled German currency. He then collapsed on the bed and slept till noon the next day without taking his clothes off.
I picked up all the bills in the morning. Ian had won the equivalent of about $100 Canadian, which was a fortune in 1954. He was actually too young to even gain entrance to the casino.
The cruise ended back in Amsterdam and Ian and I made our way to Liverpool for an overnight ferry to Belfast. Love the photo of Ian with the three constables in Liverpool.
That bus tour of Europe has provided a lifetime of memories.