My Worst Holiday Ever

My very worst holiday was when I was about 12 years old and I went to Italy.

This was the first time I'd ever been abroad. It should have been an exciting experience. It wasn't. I hated every minute of it.

We went on a 'self drive Cosmos' holiday - very popular in the early 1970's. Ie; we drove all the way to Italy stopping at various run down hotels en-route. I remember before we went my Dad had to paint the car headlights with a special yellow paint. I can't actually remember why, but I think it had something to do with the fact that British car headlights were different from those abroad and would stand out in a foreign country, thus making them more susceptible to theft.

I remember being really, really, excited before we went. I'd always had a great time on family holidays and myself and my sisters used to count down the weeks until it was time to go. Nobody that I knew went abroad for their holidays. At the time we lived in the Midlands and most of my friends went to Skegness every year. I was very aware that going abroad was a privilege that not many families could afford.

I felt very guilty for not enjoying that holiday, but I would rather have been in a caravan in Tenby. (See yesterday's blip).

Our holiday was two weeks long, but about a week of that was taken up by being stuck in a car, with no air conditioning, sweltering hot weather, driving on motorways through various European countries. Every so often we'd stop and walk around a town. We were never allowed to have an ice cream because everything was so expensive. And we never had time to have a proper look around because we were always tied to getting to the next evening stopover.

I'm sure my parents thought they were giving us the very best of holidays and indeed, at the end of that holiday, I'd been to France, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland & Italy. Six European countries! As far as I was concerned I still knew no more about them than I would have done by looking at a geography book.

For me, sitting in a car all day long, was not my idea of a holiday. I'd been used to beaches, freedom, making new friends, having fun. Looking at scenery and walking around foreign towns with my parents & sisters, being unable to wander off by myself to explore, not being able to understand the language or money - to me that wasn't a holiday.

I know that my parents thought that they were widening our horizons and giving us the best possible experiences of other cultures. In the 1970's I know I was very lucky to have gone abroad.

Unfortunately, I hated that holiday so much that (apart from holidaying with my parents) I never went on holiday abroad again until I was in my early 30's.