Nobody blogged in 1986!

This is a retrospective blog post. It isn't meant to be fraudulent. i just wanted a permanent record of our travels.

Lyn recorded this trip at the time in her trip diary and in an occasional letter home. It was our first trip overseas and a plastic bagful of tickets and postcards were collected as souvenirs. Photographs were taken too. Many of the later photographs were lost and most of the letters home. Others survived for many years as I spasmodically attempted to turn it all into a single record. This is my final attempt – I hope. Lyn’s diary is in green. My comments from the first album are in blue. Later commentary is in black. The pictures are a mixture of photographs taken at the time, postcards purchased and the occasional internet image because originals were lost.

We were traveling to two of the places I had always dreamed of seeing, Greece and Egypt. Lyn had been on a world trip in her mid teens with her parents - but not to these places. I had never been outside of Australia. Shortly before leaving we found out Lyn was pregnant.

My mum drove us to the airport and took this photograph. In those pre-internet days we had pre-booked all of the Egyptian travel, tours and accommodation. In Greece, after the first three days, we would be driving ourselves and finding places to stay on the way.  Lyn had largely left the itinerary to me.

We landed at Melbourne and Lyn began her first claustrophobic battles with toilets as we flew on to Singapore. In Singapore we paid for a shower and Lyn lost her black sweater in the extraordinarily large and modern terminal. After a stop at Dubai we flew on to Athens.

Greek smoking taverna at back of the plane ...

The last stretch was so hard. Got to Athens 27¼ hours later – 2 hours odd late.