Thanks, Calamari, and thank you one and all for the thrills. I've been following the thread and enjoying the tales, but had a few surprise social events take up my time.

swalter, I had a few experiences like yours on my first trip to Europe following my sophomore year of college. As I recall, my girlfriend and I were followed all over Rome by various branches of the Italian military. We finally did spend a day and an evening with a couple of Italian college boys, but my friend was much more interested in her date than I was in mine. Needless to say, the situation became awkward -- what is worse than having 2 people make out in the front seat of the car while you are attempting to make polite conversation in the back?

AAFrequentFlyer, I had a hunky flight attendant (no, they're not <i>all</i> gay) seriously try to convince me to get off my SF flight in Dallas to spend the weekend with him. (Quite a bit of first class champagne had made its way back to me and my seatmate.) I was tempted, but figured my husband wouldn't appreciate it.

kaudrey, what a great story! Proof that we usually regret the things we didn't do, not the things we did do.

capo, I, too, can get very passionate about ice cream, especially gelato!

Natalia: oooooooo...you definitely get the prize for the hottest story! :S-

Aged 17, my first trip to Florence, on a study trip with school. We stayed at a hostel run by Monks near the Santa Croce - a hostel that seemed to be filled with nothing but male Italian university students who lived there during term time.

One day I was walking up to my room passed the old refectory when a young italian who was sketching beckoned me over. He wanted to draw my portrait (oh right, I thought, you want to make a bit of cash out of the stupid tourist). &quot;no no&quot; he said &quot;studente&quot;. Seems he was a student from the Accademia, preparing for his final exhibition, and he just wanted to draw me.

For the rest of the week we were inseparable, sneaking past the teachers in the early morning to meet him on the corner for a cappucino, walking through the piazzas before anyone else was awake, meeting on the roof terrace late at night to hear his melodramatic declarations of love.

We swopped addresses, as you do, and I thought no more of it, until I started to receive a series of letters from him, all beautifully illustrated with sketches of me and him at the bottom. &quot;I love you&quot;, &quot;come meet my parents&quot;, &quot;can't live without you&quot;, that sort of thing. I got a bit scared off - I was only 17 for crissakes - and stopped replying to his letters. 2 years later I received a final letter, containing a number of photographs - photographs of his latest one-man exhibition in New York, containing huge portraits in oil of ME!! The letter simply read &quot;Do you still remember me? Giovanni&quot;

Oh yes Giovanni, I still remember you.

Why would anyone want to &quot;register under another name&quot;? Obviously the sexiest thing I ever did in Europe was attend a four-day sexually-oriented get-together in Hamburg (it happens annually in August and attracts several thousand each year) and I've attended several times. And yes, it certainly did have it's romantic moments.
Other than that, going to Amsterdam and staying in a particular boutique-style hotel in which all the rooms are equipped with sexplay equipment.
If you want or really need to read details of what actually went on, well then I'd say you have been missing some action lately!!

JonJon, I hope you weren't cheap and opted for new sexplay equipment in theat &quot;high action&quot; room. You never know where the nasty used stuff has been before. Oh, and did it take you long to figure out the instruction manuals?

We found a hotel in Switzerland where the single beds were only 2 feet apart.

Is it true that the Swiss put single beds in honeynoon suites? I never found such a suite to know.

Like the old joke goes, hell is where the cops are German, the cooks are British, the lovers are Swiss, the French are the engineers, the Americans make the cars, and the Italians organize everything.
Heaven is where the cooks are French, the cops are British, the lovers are Italian, the engineers are German, the Japanese make the cars, the Dutch or Austrians make the beer, and the Swiss run everything. (Look who got left out.)

Bob, I think it usually goes: And the Americans pay for everything!

In college, over thirty years ago, I was hitchhiking with my friend Ellen in France, in the Dordogne. A young truck driver pulled over and offered us a ride. He was carrying a load of pork to Biarritz. Only two seats, so he moved over for me to share the driver's seat. Ellen sat in the passenger seat.

I am now between the driver and the gearshift. He is calling out instructions (in French!) to me to shift gears as he drives around the narrow roads. I am quite giddy, Ellen is hanging on and praying, and the driver is offering to take us to Biarritz where he has a friend for Ellen.

We got out of the car long before Biarritz. I've always wondered. And for my birthday last summer Ellen sent me a poem she had written about the coming of age of her son. Our wild ride was featured. My daughter asked why I was crying over the mail.

Wow, Kate, what a great story! I'll bet your jaw dropped when you saw the huge paintings. Not everyone can claim to have been a muse.

Bob Brown, toooo funny about the Swiss beds! Seems there are more doubles than there used to be. I can remember so many hotels where we were constantly rearranging the furniture to push the twin beds together.

JonJon, it's just a fun thread. Don't take it so seriously. Nobody is asking for the details of your sex life, unless you have a story you want to share. Attending a sexually oriented get together and staying in an establishment that offers sex toys as part of the package are both certainly racy stories, but I'm afraid your condescending attitude takes all the oomph out of it.

Sometimes I wonder who and how many have slept in the beds in my hotel room. Imagine what Jon Jon must have asked him/herself about the hotel in Amsterdam.

Travel tip #1,289 - always take lysol moistened clothes with you on your &quot;travels&quot;.

I hope JonJon sprayed Lysol on all that used sex equipment in his hotel room in Amsterdam.

I'm determined to start the New Year on a more charitable note. Maybe the &quot;equipment&quot; was not the sort we are imagining. Perhaps the room was equipped with things like handcuffs and trapeze bars. (Camille would have loved that, eh, Degas?)

Marilyn, I try not to rent rooms that have handcuffs, whips and swings attached to the wallks and/or ceilings. I almost missed a train once by making that mistake.

I jumped aboard as it was pulling out of the station, but was forced by the conductor to buy a ticket for the headboard I was dragging behind me. Do you know how hard it is to hire a welder on Sunday in Europe to release you from a pair of tricky handcuffs?

Marilyn and Degas -

You're both too funny. What a lovely way to end the year. Marilyn, from your initial posts, I've been hysterical with laughter, and Degas - sharp, sharp, I like that!

I always travel with ropes (doesn't everyone), for the two beds many hotels push together, that start to move as soon as there is any action up-top. The look on the face of the housekeeper is always something to behold, when they try to separate the beds to change the linens.

However, for me, the sexiest and most fun, was on a trip, on the then new Boeing 777 (back in '95), entering the new &quot;handicapped&quot; bathroom, large enough for a wheelchair or walker and for me the &quot;lightbulb&quot; lite up as I grabbed sweetie from his nearby seat - for the first time we actually enjoyed the Mile High Club.

We made many trips to &quot;that&quot; Lav (even though the flight attendent would indicate that others were open - we waited - and you could see her smile peaking, but made no further comment). Lucky for us it was a very very long flight - first time the two of us deplaned such &quot;happy campers.&quot;

And we're &quot;travel buddies&quot; - who never know where surprises will find us and we them!

Happy New Year to All!

Glad you're enjoying it, sandi, but wait a minute -- you always travel with ropes? Are you a mountain climber or do you want to elaborate on that?

Sandi, I sure like the way your creative mind works. A bold woman with &quot;special needs&quot; is indeed a wonder to behold. Nothing handicapped about you!

Well our bed in a Vienna hotel was a full double equal in square measure to our king. But it was as hard as a metamorphic rock! I think a plywood bunk with no pad would have been softer.
At least the springs did not inflict bodily harm.

Do you really think I can put my answer here? For the public to see? Some things are better left unsaid.

Aw, come on, earl. If you expect us to use Mr. Imagination, you have to at least give us a hint.

Maybe not sexy, but three instances (with different women) were quite funny. All happened ourside my home country in countries where English is not very common.

First instance: I used condom as always and during the act the woman said: &quot;I do not like gum.&quot; I had been chewing gum earlier and first thought I must still be chewing it. But I quickly realized I wasn't chewing gum so I said &quot;what.&quot; She repeated the word gum and then started laughing and quickly replaced with the word condom. We both started laughing so hard that we had to start all over again. But, anyway, I still used the condom.

Second instance, a woman came back to my rented apartment after we had spent time at a circus. The bed was in what was really a dining room. It had a huge chandelier with many lights. She wanted to leave the lights on, but they were just too bright for me, so without saying anything I got a stool from the kitchen and climbed up to start unscrewing some of the bulbs. Later, she told me that when she saw me get the stool and reach for the chandelier area, she thought I was going to propose that we try to copy (during the act) some of the trapeeze acts we had witnessed.

Third instance, we were on a small narrow sofa and during the attempt to mount my knee slid off the side of the sofa, I lost my balance and slid onto floor pulling her with me. Second attempt with her on top and suddenly she starts saying ouch, ouch (or some such in her language). Turns out she had gotten a cramp in her leg, so we had to disengage carefully and I rubbed the cramp out of her leg. Third attempt, well I started laughing so much about first two attempts that we had to call off the event for a half hour or so until I could attain the necessary state. Meanwhile she said, &quot;maybe we just aren't supposed to do this.&quot; But fourth attempt was successful.

This started out sexy and then had a bad turn of events and happened to a friend of mine:

She and boyfriend were romping on the floor of a pensione in France and one of the loops from a shaggy throw rug got stuck between her two lower front teeth. Nothing would loosen it, she was standing in the nude with a throw rug hanging out of her mouth.

They both started laughing so hard that they were both crying and everytime he asked her what she wanted to do about it and she she answered in a muffled ruglike way, this would set them laughing again, finally she wrapped herself in a sheet and he went down to the front desk which luckily had a night watchman and mimed cutting with scissors. The nightman eyed him suspiciously and surmised that he was up to something no good so he refused with a wave of the hand. The boyfriend finally led him up to the room, where my friend stood clutching the rug to her face then she lowered it and the man's mouth dropped open in horror and disbelief then his face turned to disgust and awe at the crazy Americans.

Mumbling to himself he went downstairs and came back with a sharp knife, which scared my friend (young at the time) and she locked the door to the bathroom and started crying.

After much pleading by the boyfriend she let only him come in and cut the rug loop. The next morning the word must have gotten around because the staff stood still and then laughed as they passed them in the halls and on the bill was a few extra francs for the &quot;ruined rug&quot;.