annabelle2

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!

Daisy54

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".

AnselmAdorne

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

mr_go

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

Curt

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.......

BTilke

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.)

LJ

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?

AnselmAdorne

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

carolyn

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.

CecilBD

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.

AngelaS

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

Pegontheroad

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.

ms_go

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.

Rudy

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.

P_M

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

JAGIRL

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.

bob_brown

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

In between, various UK stamps.

kswl

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.

Jean

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.

ron

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.