What is the very first date stamped in your first passport?

well, I no longer have my first passport, but I think they did still passports across EU borders in those days.....

I was 10 and we went to Majorca, specifically Magaluf, which, if any of you know anything about Majorca, is the most touristy, package holiday, sun sea and sand, get your all day english breakfasts here sort of nightmare resort I wouldn't dream of going to now. But, at 10 years old, I thought it was PARADISE.

Kate! Nice to see you. How is the villa in Apulia? Still want to hear about the news and your sister's news on hers as well...

>What is the very first date stamped in your first passport?<

Sept. 12, 1793.

The passport was signed by T. Jefferson.

It isn't actually stamped, the Immigration Agent attached a visa with a seal.

I was 14, I was by myself, I'd saved up my pocket and paper round money and I'd bought a train ticket to Euston and a Skyways Coach Air ticket to Beauvais.

I proudly pulled out the British Visitor's Passport I'd bought for 7/6d and watched it get stamped.

August 1963. Went through Customs, clutching the copy of the Searchers' Sweets for My Sweet I'd bought for my French penfriend (6/8d at NEMS: that week - like 32 other weeks that year - a local group was at No 1)

Prat seriously thought the local stuff they played on Salut les Copains was worth lstening to. Never trusted a Frenchman's judgement since.

It was 15 years later before I could afford to fly an ocean. New York wasn't one tenth as alien as a culture that rated Richard Anthony.

My first stamp was at Heathrow on the 14th of September, 1971. I was a college sophomore taking a semester abroad.

On December 1 of that year I crossed to Calais, then continued on by train to Rome. I returned to the UK on December 20th, and to the USA on the 27th. I didn't return to Europe for a long while.

The passport picture shows me with my hair parted in the middle, tied back in a ponytail, and sporting a moustache and Frank Zappa or Apollo Ohno style patch of fur on my chin. I returned well-groomed, sporting a Van Dyke, and garbed in a gray herringbone cashmere sportcoat. My wished they'd sent me to England years earlier.

Great thread.

That would be "My parents wished . . . "

June 1970 at Schiphol on a college choir concert tour which lasted 6 weeks, visited 6 countries, and cost each of us a whopping $450 that included most meals, flights, ground transportation, various sightseeing tours, etc.

We were given two additional weeks to be totally on our own and I chose to spend the time in London. I rented a room at a hotel named the Kiwi Hall in Earl's Court. That cost 1 Pound per night and I had a two-week Tube Pass and lived by the "Europe on $5 a Day" guidebook.

One of my most vivid memories was of the night one of the two busses were put up in a "hotel" near Stratford that had been used for the filming of a movie entitled, "The Haunting of Hill House" and the house was kind of a low-end Gosford Park with this adorable Great Dane running up and down the hallways.

I'm glad I didn't know then what I know now!

That would be April 15, 1968 stamped in Iceland. Special occasion you bet. That was our honeymoon. Took an Icelandic Airline turboprop (it was the least expensive then) to Iceland for three days and on to Luxembourg for a few days, train to Paris for a week, rental car to Switzerland, drive back to Paris after 10 days and then train to Brussels for a few days and back to Luxembourg for the flight home. It was the first time I had ever been more than 700 or so miles from home, same for DW not counting her immigrating to US as a toddler. I had little idea what to expect in Iceland and it was fantastic. Loved the countryside in Luxembourg. Paris went far beyond my fantasies. I can't think of a better and more romantic place for a honeymoon (maybe Venice). It was our first stay at the Hotel du Danube - a hotel to which we have returned several times. We had a beautiful room in the attic with a small balcony overlooking rue Jacob. Perfect! In Geneve we stayed at the Hotel Regina with a balcony overlooking the lake. It was a wonderful place. Don't remember the hotel name in Lucerne, but it too overlooked the lake and the old covered bridge. In Grindlewald, when it was still small and before all the tourists, we stayed at the Silberhorn. Our room's view was of the Jungfrau. We received new year cards from the owners of the Silberhorn for years until the hotel passed to new management. We had arrived in Grindlewald without reservations and looking at the pole with all of the town's hotel names on it while waiting for a herd of cows to cross the road, we saw the name Silberhorn followed by the Hebrew letters for kosher. We had to see what a kosher hotel in the wilds of Switzerland looked like and it exactly fit my mind's picture of a Swiss Chalet.

We have since been back to most of these places on other trips and plan to recreate our honeymoon trip for our 40th anniversery coming up in 2008. I really believe that our fairly lengthly honeymoon, with its shared experiences further bonded us as a couple and played an important part in the longevity of our marriage.

July 9, 1968 - SFO

No longer have the passport but it would have been stamped June, 1948 when my mother and I visited my grandparents in Darwen, Lancashire. We also went to Scotland for the Ayr races. Met my future wife in Gourock and married her 10 years later.

Sometime in July, 1966. I was 14. I passed an adult eduction art history course, and if students passed it, we could go on a 3 week art history tour of Italy and Greece. Swissair to Zurich which punched the passport, then to Milan...etc.
It took years to get back and then the new passport was stamped in Paris.

I don't think I have the passport, or at least I don't know where it went. But first stamp was Tokyo Haneda (Narita wasn't built yet), when I was 6 weeks old.

I got my first passport stamp in 1975 when my girlfriend (now my wife) and I went to France. We arrived in Paris in September on an Air France 747 from Toronto, I think it was.

We spent a couple of weeks in Paris and Strasbourg and then a couple of weeks in England and Scotland visiting her family.

Anselm

I no longer have my first passport, but the first date was in July 1987. I was 27 and traveling to Cancun - way, way before Cancun became what it is today. I traveled by myself, and ended up having the best vacation of my 20s! First time I tried snorkeling, and coming face to face with Mayan ruins was something I shall truly never forget.

First passport stamp when I crossed an ocean was in August 1998. I was 38 and traveled to Israel with my mother. Israel still stands out the most fascinating place I've ever visited. But I do have to say I was very impressed with the medical services provided there: after experiencing some medical problems, I was correctly diagnosed as being hyper-thyroid, something the US doctors had never been able to figure out.

March 2001, Easter sunday. I was 22 and it was in London, my first vacation overseas.

Tracy

Went to Canada, Mexico and Cuba..in the dark ages.. no passports needed. First passport stamp , 1963.. London and the countryside, meeting my DH's relatives and developing a great fondness for the UK.

July 1998. I never had a passport for any of my Mexico or Canada trips before then.

First stamp was the Netherlands - the beginning of my 9-week study abroad trip in Europe. What I wouldn't give to go back and do that trip again!

October 1958, sailed from New York to Bremerhaven Germany to join husband in Army

March, 1985 at age 15. Toured eight countries in Europe on that trip and I've been hooked ever since.

spring of 1976....i was ahigh school senior and it was our spanish class trip to spain....toured madrid, sevilla, torremolinos and many other small towns. we travelled on a bus with kids from another high school.

July, 1967. Tel Aviv. Israel Tour for Teenagers. Amazingly it was not canceled. Walking from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, we were warned not to leave the road because of the land mines.

I hope my parents still have that passport, but I've never seen it. Anyways, it was sometime in 1983. I was five. It was my first trip to visit our family in Ireland.

My entrance visa to the US was stamped in 1989. Didn't have a passport then - the USSR government stripped us off the citizenship as a family of traitors going to a capitalist country. As funny as it sounds NOW, I'm not kdding!

early 60s. My parents took me to Rome, Firenze, Pisa.
I'll never forget it!

Live in USA and had traveled to Canada several times but no passport needed at the time. First passport I got was in 1990 and the stamp came from London Heathrow in early August of that year. Went on a "tour" with a friend to London, Brighton, Stratford, etc. I was beside myself with joy to be there finally after dreaming about crossing the pond for so long. Remember seeing the tomb of Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey...was like finally visiting the grave of an old friend that I'd known forever. (Loved reading about the Tudors).
Passport photo was HIDEOUS. Was so glad when I could get a new one in 2000. New picture is nothing special but a lot better than the first one!

LeeParis

I think it was July, 30, 1965, the day I was admitted into the US as an AFS-exchange student...

Keflavik, Iceland, sometime in July 1969, arrove via Icelandair Air from JFK

The first overseas trip with my own passport was September 1959 to Bamberg, Germany. My mother and I joined my father who was stationed there with the 2nd Armored Cavalry. I was 12.

Hi flygirl! Longtime?
I do not have my first passport but do know that it must have been stamped with an 'exit' stamp from South Africa and an entrance stamp in Tel Aviv, Israel.
I had never been overseas in my life and here I was travelling with a husband and two(nearly) year old son!
And believe me in those days our flight was 18 hours! After that breezing through that, the whole of Europe was easy!

'In those days' meant 1980! Sorry forgot to mention the year.

I was 15, April 1990. HNL.

April 19, 1974, Chicago from the Philippines. First time I left the US to go to a foreign country, August 15, 1990, Paris, France. The ticket was free. A bank in Honolulu was giving away free airline tickets if you open a savings account. Since then, I have been fortunate to be back 28 times to Europe. I just got back from London and I am counting the days till I can go back.

October 18, 1990 at Barajas Airport in Madrid. This was my first trip over the pond. My DH and I went to Spain to find my roots: we headed north to the Basque Country, found cousins in Pamplona and then to Lleida to visit more cousins. We then took an overnight train, Barcelona to Paris and did a wine tour of France.

This trip started it all: our travel fever.

MY

June 5, 1969. Gatwick (from the US I'm fairly sure only charters landed there at the time). Spent 3 months traveling Europe with my best friend between my sophomore and junior years in college.

I only got my first passport six years ago and that was for three weeks in India. So I have my ten year visa and first stamp from India. I have since been trying to travel abroad from the US every year but my kids think I should pay their college tuition instead. Also, you didn't need a passport to travel in and out of the Caribbean, Canada, or Mexico. Times have changed.

My first trips out of the US were to Mexico but passports weren't required.

My first passport was stamped on July 3, 1980 at LHR. I took a 5 week trip for teens and we visited 8 countries between the UK and Italy. What a magical time, being a young girl seeing Europe for the first time.

Frankfurt, June 12, 1975 - first trip to europe with my boyfriend. I was 19, we had 5 weeks and rented a tiny VW bug and, staying in pensions and B&Bs, did a circle through France, across northern Spain, the Riviera, northern tip of Italy and back up to Germany to return from Frankfurt (we had super discount tickets and couldn't do open jaws).

The boyfriend didn't last that long (8 years) but my love of europe - and road trips has only grown.

June, 1955,...I was on my mother's passport. She wouldn't fly so we traveled from Montreal to Liverpool on the second half of the maiden voyage of the Ivernia, a Cunard Line vessel, to be shown off to my grandparents back in England. It took 10 days and my mother was deathly seasick the whole time. I was, at 4, adopted by the stewards and had a ball. That voyage gave me a thrist for travel that remains unquenchable.

Can't find my first passport, but it was June 1969 at Heathrow. We were newly married and school teachers. That was back when school started after Labor Day, and we had seventy some days to tour Europe and get back home. Purchased a car to use, and then brought the car back on the QEII. We were on QEII's second crossing. That trip was my first airplane trip and ocean cruise, and we are still married and traveling.

basingstoke, what a great story!

Mine was, like rkkkwan, for entry into Haneda airport, 1964, moving with my family to Tokyo. I have kept all my passports, and since I lived twice overseas and my father worked for an airline, I have some great stamps!

Now it is a much thinner one, but I still love to travel.

I keep my grandfather's on my desk as inspiration. His is filled with stamps from 1928, 1929, 1930, from places like Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Yokohama, British Hong Kong & Singapore, and Sumatra in the then-Dutch East Indies as an oil worker (with his family in tow for the Sumatra part).

It is a thin red-leather passport, quite elegant!

April, 1970 - I went on a school trip to Spain when I was a shophomore in high school. I don't recall the exact date because that passport is long gone. Back then they were only good for 5 years, and you had to get a smallpox vaccine to return to the U.S., no matter where you'd gone. I had a wonderful time on that trip and really enjoyed Spain, but my most vivid memory is of the Spanish men who kept trying to pick us up every time we ventured out in public. Back then the Spanish thought all American females were "loose".

LJ, you just brought back some interesting memories. In 1955 I was five years old and living in Quebec City. My parents used to take us to the Parc des Champs-de-Bataille, where we could look down on the ships docking at l'Anse aux Foulons. I remember the Cunard liners well. I don't recollect seeing the Ivernia, but I do remember the Carpathian and one other that started with a C ... Corinthian, perhaps? Regardless, they were quite majestic in the eyes of a child. They made regular stops there for some years after; I'm not sure when Cunard withdrew the service.

Sorry for taking this off topic; now back to your regular programming, lol.

Anselm

October, 1991. Ms_go and I went to Italy together for two weeks, flying into and out of Munich. There were a great many special memories.

Here is a trip report we cobbled together long after the fact:
http://www.onelittleworld.com/northern_italy_1.html

First trip across an ocean was courtesy of Uncle Sam and LBJ - and no passport required just some ID papers and a copy of orders. It was also first time in Aisa. Unlike many fellow travelers I got to come home and continue to travel under better conditions.......

My very first stamp was from Liberia, where we lived for a while as my father was working there with the LAMCO people. We looked at the areas we lived in recently (outside Buchanan and Yekepa in the Nimba mountains) on Google Earth and those communities have been essentially wiped off the map by decades of war. It's now just ruins and bush.
Along with my passport I had to carry my yellow health certificate (remember those) with stamps attesting to all those shots I needed for Libera...
some photos (not by us): http://home.lyse.net/liberia/
(Sidebar: if you've seen the film Amistad and heard the beautiful song Dry Your Tears, Africa, it's sung in the Mende language, which was used by some in the part of the Nimba mountains where we lived.)

Anselm-I note from another thread that (at least I think I've got this right) that you are now living in Nova Scotia-though we currently live in TO we have a home in Lunenburg and are spending more and more time there. Perhaps there will be soon enough of us for one of those Fodorite Get-togethers the Americans are always having? Halifax, maybe?

LJ, how wonderful that you have a home in Lunenburg. I've visited a number of times, and once had the pleasure of sailing into the harbour. It is a beautiful town.

Yes, we are in Halifax now, and I think there are at least a couple of other posters living in this area. I wonder if we could arrange a get-together? The idea of a summer lunch along the waterfront sounds very appealing. If you have a chance this summer, just post a reply to any thread I've posted on and I'll find it. Then we could figure out how to smoke out the other Nova Scotian Fodorites.

Anselm

Mine was at LHR in September 1980. I was 44 and went with my daughter on a tour to make Fodorites shudder of 11 countries in 21 days. We had a blast. I've been back to most of those countries and a few others in more depth since, but there is really nothing like one's first trip.

Like others have said, I had been in Mexico and Canada with only my driver's license for ID.

In the late 80's and 90's I had at least two passports that had accordian style extensions pasted in to the center and when one opened it, the added pages spilled onto the floor. Had to get it renewed, not because it was expiring, but because it wouldn't or couldn't hold any more. It was funny to watch the passport and security people look at it, then look at me, then look at it again, and try to figure where it began and ended, and which page was pertinent. Quite amusing.

June 1984; I was four years old; first trip to Poland to meet the family!

I think I tossed this passport, but the date would have been in 1963 in Tokyo. I think the airport was Haneda. The thing that was pretty cool about this passport is that I traveled so much that they (whoever they were) put in an extension.

The event itself was pretty traumatic. I had landed in a country where I didn't speak the language and had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. I was exhausted by a long flight and had probably drunk too many cocktails.

When that passport expired, I was living in Germany, and I had to go to a consulate somewhere to get a new one. This time, since I was a teacher for Dept. of Defense, I was given a passport with a red cover. I liked that cover because I felt like a diplomat, until I tried to go into East Berlin (in 1968). Our guys at Checkpoint Charlie wouldn't let me leave the US sector. I protested that I was just a teacher and knew nothing that the East Germans wanted to know, but it did me no good. I never got into that part of Berlin until I returned last year.

Mine was June 9, 1979 in Athens (still have the passport). I was 15 and beginning a 30-day, six-country high school tour of Europe. One other Fodorite was also on the trip--but it wasn't mr_go.

Vienna, 1972. My first trip to Europe. I caught the fever, and have been to Europe every year since. Total cost for the trip for two was $700 for 10 days.

Curt, my hat is off to you and all who served.

First stamp my passport received must have been sometime in the summer of 1976...or thereabout. I was about 1 at the time.

That trip was to Orlando...Disney World.

I have no idea where that passport is...must have been thrown away or something.

Which passport? First one: August 28, 1955, Cuxhaven, Germany.
Current one: August 25, 1998, Zürich, Switzerland.

In between, various UK stamps.

August 1971, Luxemborg. I flew Icelandic Air from JFK and we stopped and refuled in Iceland, but no passport stamp that I remember, even though we had plane trouble and stayed overnight.

I'm looking at it. It's in my mother's name with my name added as an accompanying minor child. Issued January 24, 1957, and the first entry stamp is "London Airport - February 13, 1957."

It was my mother's first trip home since she married my GI dad in 1946 and her first passport as a U.S. citizen. She's 34 years old in the photo and looks amazing, and I'm the pixey-haired kid with dimples.

"This passport is not valid for travel to the following areas under control of authorities with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations: Albania, Bulgaria, and those portions of China, Korea and Viet-Nam under Communist control. This passport is not valid for travel in Hungary, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria." Now that's interesting.

27 August 1966 at Schipol airport. Two buddies & I doing a 6 week modified Europe on $5 a day grand tour. Memories --- probably how irritating we must have been to other 2nd class train passengers on night trains as we stayed awake all night drinking cheap wine and singing, badly, folk songs of the era.

Sept. something 1956. I wish I could say I was just a baby.

I do still have my first passport somewhere in a box with the corner cut off it.

And the first time it was used was in 1966 to travel from Manchester to Karachi.

I wish I had had my own for my first international trip aged 2 and a half. My Mum still sometimes talks about it - travelling with a toddler and my younger sister (6 mths at the time) to Lagos in a turbo prop.

Now that's what you'd call a real adventure.

2 June 1986 -- two days after our wedding when we landed at Gatwick for our honeymoon in London. My first time out of the US.
20 years later, we're still travelling together!

Annette

What great stories everyone! My special date is April 16, 1983. I was 16 years old. We went to France - Paris, Brittany, Normandy. It was fairly grey for much of the trip but our day at Mont St. Michel was beautiful.

Any more stories?

My first passport stamp must have been Le Havre maritime immigration, getting off the steamship Ile de France, but I was only 2 years old at the time. But I had a much more chic experience years later, when I moved to France, I took the steamship Michelangelo with my steamer trunks and arrived and was stamped into France in Cannes. I remember that I got through customs with extreme ease, because the man in front of me opened his suitcase and the first thing on top was a big revolver, so they just waved me through to concentrate on him.

I can't find it so I can't tell you the exact date, but it would have been September 1981 (both the first passport stamp and the first time I crossed an ocean). I was headed for a semester in Paris but those were the days of $200 flights to London, so I flew to London, met a friend there, and saw the city for four days before we took the ferry across the English Channel. I remember I had recently gotten a "Lady Di" haircut. I have no pictures of my four days in London, which were gloriously sunny, because of a film mix-up, and I've never managed to make it back!

My first stamp was Shannon, Ireland, in 1967. I was 21 years old. No one in my family had ever "gone back" -- at least that's how I considered it, and it had been about 100 years since many of my ancestors had left -- and what a thrill it was.

My friend and I had booked a 9 country/22 day tour of Europe. Needless to say, we were the youngest people on the bus. What were we thinking!

One of the countries we visited on the trip was Italy, where I met one of my first cousins for the first time. In fact, no one in our family had ever met her (except her father, of course). My uncle was a soldier in WWII and had married an Italian, probably in 1945. They had a baby in 1946, but unfortunately my uncle had gone AWOL and was soon brought back to the US. He did not his family again until 1981 when they came to the US to visit. So, my seeing this "mysterioius Italian cousin" in Rome in 1967 was quite an event as she had never seen ANY of her American relatives.

It was certainly a trip I will never forget.

Mine was South Africa, in 1970. I was in high school, going to visit my grandmother in Capetown. I made the trip by myself, flying from JFK to Rio, then across to Johannesburg before connecting onward to Capetown. Though seriously jetlagged, I was amazed to discover on the flight from Jo'burg to Capetown that my seatmate was the singer Percy Sledge ("When a Man Loves a Woman") who was arriving in South Africa for a concert tour. He was a really nice guy -- naturally, I got his autograph -- and we oohed and aahed together at the view as we descended into Capetown. Of course South Africa was still deep in apartheid in 1970, but the government had made the bizarre decision to declare him an "honorary white," so he could stay in 5-star hotels which were whites-only. I've done a lot of traveling since then, but this ranks as one of my all-time most memorable trips, and Capetown is still the most beautiful city I've ever seen.

For the first 20 years of my life I never needed a passport to travel within Europe but only an International ID, which I used very often to go to Provence.
My first official stamped passport was when I came to the US, I was 21 then.
Since then and having lived in various parts of the world I had to renew many passports.

My first passport was issued June 8th, 1960, when I went to England with my Practice Wife, to be inspected by my new in laws.

I needed no such document when I travelled to Korea in 1950, since that little jaunt was sponsored by Uncle Sam and the Marine Corps.

11/01/1955

August 27, 1993. I was just out of college and going to see U2 play two nights in Dublin with a friend from college and someone I'd only ever written to, we'd never met! It was a tremendous week. Probably due to the concerts, a long night over a few bottles of Baileys at a bar in Killarney and a handsome young Dubliner who charmed me with his accent, it was truly a trip to remember. I returned to visit over a dozen times thereafter for obvious reasons. Oh the memories!!!

hey Amy, I saw them on their Zooropa tour too - in Berlin Germany, earlier that summer! Too funny!

First stamp was August, 1974. We entered the UK at Gatwick, my faithful traveling companion, our then 13-year-old daughter and her friend, for a one-week visit. We were sure this was the only trip we'd ever make. The cost was $399 per person, everything included but shopping and lunch. We stayed at a hotel on Cromwell Road. Richard Nixon resigned while we were there; Covent Garden was still a produce market. There were two -- maybe three -- television channels and the announcer reminded you to turn off your set when they signed off for the night. The BBC announced that it would come back on to broadcast Nixon's resignation live.
In a few weeks, we'll return to England for our 13th or 14th visit. We do that every 18 months or so. We'll stay for a month in a flat we first found in 1994. It's around the corner from the hotel we stayed in on our first trip. We have no idea what happend to our daughter's friend. Our daughter became a travel agent.

If you want to get a lot of stamps on your passport, go to Tallinn, Estonia. They stamped my passport when I left Helsinki, when I entered Tallinn, when I left Tallinn, and when I entered my next country, Germany (Berlin). Four stamps. Now I need to add pages to my passport.

June 30th 1959, Havana .....at six weeks old I traveled from Panama to Idlewilde....not exactly a passport - some sort of visa/transit document for an infant..... I lost it a few years back....bummer....

How about at 14 years old, had saved $99 from a Norfolk Pilot-Virginia Star paper route. Bought a "good-for-nintey-days" Greyhound Bus ticket and left Virginia Beach - solo - in June of too long ago. Traveled to Washington DC; visited old maid aunts in both Cleveland (really Painesville), Ohio and Chicago (Southside), Illinois. Then, on to Los Angeles visiting cousins and to Santa Cruz visiting more cousins and hanging at the Castle Beach in Seabright (I distinctly recall the millions of migrating monarch butterflies in the eucalyptus trees in the small park behind the museum). Two months after embarkation, got back on the bus in San Franciso and returned to Washington, DC, where, in the interim, my parents had moved. Along the way, shared aisles with just-released ex-convicts, and many others that I know would not have passed today's standards of "savory"...all were unconditionally kind and encouraging. Learned how to sleep on a bus (sitting on the floor, head resting on seat...yecch!). Ate some of the most atrocious busstop cafe meals imaginable (at least by current taste) and never knew the worst of it.

With today's perspective of parental coddling, looking back on it, I wonder: were Mom and Dad trying to get me lost? Nah...but, my times have certainly changed.

My First Passport - Stamped March 1989. London, England. It was with out a doubt a life changing event - First, I was 15 and it was my frist trip out of the country. Second, I was to compete in an international music competition. Third, I won a Gold Medal in Classical Music and a Silver is Jazz. This was the start of my obsession with travel and seeing the world. I want to see the places I read about and see on TV which never serves due justice.

MANY years ago - March 12, 1950, stamped in Naples. I was 14, and arriving in Italy to spend a year and a half in Rome with my parents (father had business in Europe). It was a fantastic experience all the way around. I attended a girl's school in Rome (Marymount) and had many interesting friends (among them a young Norman Schwarzkopf-his father was an Army general stationed in Germany) and experiences. That year in Europe was one of the highlights of my life. Just a few years after World War II, it was a most exciting time to be there. I've loved Europe ever since!

My first passport stamp was in Lisbon Portugal in May of 1969. At that time the passport size was a lot larger and good for only 5 years. To get a passport we had to appear before a judge in a US court and swear an oath of allegiance to the US of A.

My memories of Portugal are of a bull fight we saw, and that on leaving, the hotel wouldn't release our luggage until the maids had made an inventory check of the rooms furnishings. Some things were missing and the red faced "Thieves" were called off the bus and made to pay-up.

Prior to that trip my DW and I traveled to Bermuda, no passport required. Previously I had traveled to various countries in Europe, Panama and the South Pacific courtesy of my uncle, Sam.

March 4th, 2006. Dublin Airport, my 17th birthday.

July 1957. I was eight years old and shared a passport with my mother and younger brother. Arrived in Bremerhaven, Germany after 2 weeks on a slow freighter from New Orleans.

Interesting and fun read!
Mine was 1971, London..a 5 day business and fun stopover enroute to Dakar, Senegal where we were to live for 3 years. We had 3 wonderful children, ages 8,9,10 and a DOG (yes she stayed at Heathrow in the "enroute" kennels for the 5 days,)
Those passports were good for 5 years. Husband got a full passport of stamps, and we all had to renew at the Embassy in Lisbon toward the end of our 2 years living there.

Frankfurt, Germany....December 10, 1971. Auditioned and was chosen as a singer/dancer for a USO Tour to keep Our Boys overseas on military bases happy over the holidays because Bob Hope was sick that year. Spent 6 weeks in Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium singing with 5 other young women and a band half-naked (well, the women were, anyway) in places like airplane hangars and mess halls.

Memories are many, but the absolute best were: 1) singing for a large group of Italian soldiers on an outdoor stage in Bergamo in the snow wearing (I kid you not) glittery paper mini-dresses and having them throw bunches of roses at us after the performance was over, 2) playing a German slot machine at a bar and winning 500 Deutsche Marks which was a fortune at that time and age, and 3) breaking away from my group on Christmas Eve in Venice - it was snowing and more magical than you could ever believe to my 22-year-old eyes. I followed my ears to some little side-alley-lost trattoria that was open and serving dinner and had not the best meal of my life but probably the most memorable, with the entire family doting on me and being amazed that this young, alone, intrepid American girl had found her way to them all by herself on Christmas Eve in the snow. I still remember the frost on the windows of that trattoria and the rosy faces of the owners and other guests who hosted me as if I were a long lost member of the family.

How could I not become a Europhile after such an introduction, eh?

StCirq - that's a great story! My family was stationed in Germany in 1971.

My first passport was 1959. I was six months old and my mother was traveling with my sister, age 2, and me from Washington State to Ankara, Turkey. We were joining my father who was stationed there.

We flew to New York, then the 3 of us went to New Jersey to buy a car to ship overseas. The extra special part was that I had just learned to crawl and insisted upon practicing up and down the aisle. Can you imagine the torture that trip must have been?

I don't remember anything about our 2 years in Turkey unfortunately, but the photos are great.

The very first date stamped in my passport was 1974. My family and I were moving to Germany (dad was Army). As I was just a little kid at the time, my dad had to sign the passport on my behalf. The actual stamp is a bit of a mystery to me...it's partly in German and in English. Anyways, maybe someone knows what I'm talking about. The first real entry stamp was when we visited England in April 1979 and we arrived via ferry at Folkstone.

I had my first passport stamp from France on April 8th, 1975. It was a very memorable moment as I was only nine years old. Traveling was new to me and that trip which took me from England, all over Europe, Middle East and South Asia will always stick firmly in my mind. I even wrote a book about it. In the end there were nine stamps from that trip with all varied degrees of interest for me! Love traveling!

Accompanying minor 7/1/1959 ,Havana... we were en route from Panama to NYC is was about 6 weeks old....first passport of my own 7/1/1975. JFK to Frankfurt with friends for a crazy summer of fun in Germany....and I keep going back to Europe - I've lost count..... dozens and dozens of times......

Mine is not very exciting - October 2000, Japan - work trip. Two weeks with 14 of my closest colleagues, led by a manager who was deathly afraid that one of us was going to go missing.

I was 25, the only woman in the group, and at least 10 years younger than the next youngest person in our group. Total fish out of water. Our destination was the company factory, which was in the boonies - very difficult to go out and do anything without a car. We had to share cars with 2-3 other people and go everywhere together. I was grouped with 2 guys in their 50s who had NO interest in going anywhere except hotel-work-hotel - dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was terrible. Next day, repeat. BORING.

Longest 2 weeks of my life.