chatham

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

fuzzylogic

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.

annettetx

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

flygirl

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?

kerouac

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.

Barbara_in_FL

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!

Celiaanne

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.

mlaffitte

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&quot 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.

kismetchimera

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.

nukesafe

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.

JoanneH

11/01/1955

amyb

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!!!

flygirl

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

VLambert

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.

wally34949

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.

seafox

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....

jw49l

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.

zoellner4

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.

Sue4

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!

Jimjim

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.