Arrival at Firenze (Florence) railway station (I)
Camping at Koblenz on the river Mosel, then Nürnburg (D)
An Inter Rail ticket gave almost unlimited travel on European railways for a month for the Under 26’s in the days before cheap air travel.
Nürnburg
Firenze, note LWT t-shirt (London Weekend Television, my then employer) with wallet under
Camping in Firenze (I), drying my Sex Pistols t-shirt
Firenze sunset with star filter
Pisa and Sienna, Tuscany (I)
Motorbike touring in Firenze... there’s an idea for my motorbike back in the UK
An Inter Rail ticket gave almost unlimited travel on European railways for a month for the Under 26’s for just £92. It was much appreciated in the days before cheap air travel. Some used it to compare all the beaches, Chris and I took the opportunity for a latter-day Grand Tour.
Here are my photos from Koblenz, where I bought the Adidas football shorts (red, blue) that I wore for the rest of the trip and enjoyed for several years afterwards. Then Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Firenze (Florence) and on to Venezia (Venice).
We camped in Firenze at the top of the hill facing Michelangelo’s Duomo and other famous monuments; we made friends with some Hungarians who pitched next door and were happy to share our wine and the sunsets.
Chris and I made rail excursions from Firenze to Pisa and Sienna, note the wooden seat in the third-class carriage. We moved on to Venezia (Venice). camping wild, we pitched our tent on the beach across the channel at the Venice Lido so we saw the sun set over the famous Venetian skyline.
Grand Canal, Venice
Camping wild at Venice Lido
Venice sunset
RIP Chris C (1959-2018)
I was carrying my Pentax MX 35mm single lens reflex camera with Pentax lenses: a 50mm f.1.4 standard lens, a 28mm f 2.8 wide and my 200mm f4 telephoto. Manual exposure and manual focus. The negative film is KodaColor II, 100 ASA, type 5035, it was the leading brand at the time for tourists. I bought the first ten rolls in London and then purchased locally.
Our naive travel adventure shines through although some negatives are rather the worse for wear despite my protecting the films from the heat. This applies particularly to where I posted the exposed films back to the UK for processing by my usual professional lab, this was to save carrying weight and also get them developed promptly. It seems it would have been better to continue to carry them myself. The developed negatives have been stored since in a domestic environment in Paterson negative files.