On Saturday, 9^th September 1967 we got married in my village church and left the next day from Victoria station to travel to Italy by train. (my fear of flying is longlived).  We went courtesy of Swan tours and were booked to stay in the Hotel du Lac at Bellagio on Lake Como.  My first foreign holiday since school trips to the South of France some years earlier.  Lou was an old hand at foreign travel as he regularly visited Switzerland to stay with his big sister in Geneva.  This friday we leave for Italy again.  Fifty years on.  This time by car (I still don’t fly) and we are planning to stay in some other cities before our sentimental visit to the same hotel in Bellagio.  I note it is still run by the same family.  Our golden wedding celebration.  Some couples do it surrounded by family and friends but that has never been our style and our preferred time for a summer break has always been around our anniversary and, since retirement, it has been possible.  The ruby wedding one saw us go by train to China via Russia and Mongolia.  That was before the financial ‘crise’ and was the culmination of many daydreams.  This is a nostalgic return to a beautiful place with lovely memories.  Looking at the old slides that have survived several house moves and one emigration we look ridiculously young and naively optimistic.

Reading the scrapbook I made afterwards (paper and pen being the forerunner of the blog) I was reminded amongst other things of our fellow British holiday makers, all of a certain age, (ours now!) who sat at breakfast with their English marmalade and at dinner with their English mustard. Does their like exist anymore? Maybe. Perhaps we shall see…