The Summer of Love, part three

The garden at Anne Hathaway's cottage at Stratford-upon-Avon. (1967 Don Dale photo)

On Sunday morning I slept in, had a good breakfast in Leicester Square at the Golden Egg, and decided to find Speakers' Corner at Hyde Park. It wasn't easy. The park is huge, 350 beautiful acres in the middle of London. I spent the morning roaming through it. The weather was warm and the sky was gloriously sunny. I saw young people exercising their horses on the bridle trails. I watched elderly ladies walking their poodles and Afghan hounds on the pathways. I took pictures of people sunning themselves by the Serpentine as they watched sailboats and rowboats out on the water. I found a plaque that said that it was Charles I who opened what had been a royal hunting ground as a public park in 1637. By the time I found Speakers' Corner, the speakers had all dispersed, and I realized I had been walking for hours.

On Sunday afternoon, I visited St. Paul's Cathedral (stunning exterior and interior), stopped at Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop (a major disappointment), and headed for the Tower of London. Begun by William the Conqueror in 1078, the Tower is set along the Thames and has its own river entrance at Traitors' Gate. I found the spot where two of Henry VIII's wives were beheaded, Anne Boleyn in 1536 and Catherine Howard six years later. I wanted to see the Crown Jewels, but the line seemed endless. Instead, I had lunch at a proper English tearoom just outside the Tower gate. Then I took the Underground back to Trafalgar Square to take some more pictures and talk to people.

On Monday, my last day in England, I got up early to be sure to catch a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon and then Warwick Castle. In a letter to my parents later, I called Stratford "a tourist trap." I visited Shakespeare's wife's home, Anne Hathaway's Cottage, which was modest inside but was backed by a lush flower garden in full bloom. The house was furnished in "period," not original, furniture, and the docent was overly sure about Shakespearean dates and facts that scholars are not so certain about. I decided that Stratford wasn't the place to find Shakespeare. The final disappointment was discovering that the churchyard where Shakespeare is buried was closed to the public -- although I suppose that's a necessity to prevent tourism damage. "I was disillusioned with Stratford-upon-Avon, to say the least," I wrote.

Warwick Castle, which dates back to 1068, was a different matter, with its extensive grounds, beautiful landscaping by Lancelot "Capability" Brown (an important name in 18th-century English garden-design history), and an extensive art collection including paintings by Van Dyke and Rembrandt. It was well worth the one-shilling price of admission.

By eight that evening, I was back in London, where I had dinner and took one last look at Trafalgar Square. It was time to go back to Bitburg. At 11 p.m., I boarded a train for Dover, where I caught the overnight ferry for Ostend, Belgium. For most of the crossing I sat on the deck not being seasick, although it was a struggle: to say the English Channel was rough that night is an understatement. Grateful to be on solid ground again, I caught a train from Ostend to Trier and then another back to Bitburg. All told, it was about an 18-hour journey.

As I look back on my first real venture out of the Eifel Mountains now, I realize that you have to learn how to travel, just as you have to learn how to program your digital thermostat or parallel-park your car: You research it and then give it a go yourself. I came back much more confident that I could take advantage of the opportunities I'd have in the next 30 months in Europe. I learned a great deal. I learned that one of the secrets is to just do it. I went to London by myself without much of a plan or much money, making it up as I went along. I learned the value of a good guidebook, especially when money is tight. I learned that it's often the unexpected adventures, the chance encounters, and, yes, the setbacks, that make a trip memorable.

In the years since, I have been to London more times than I can count, and I've visited most major capitals in Central Europe, some more than once. I've walked the beaches at Normandy for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, flown into Naples with one engine on fire, taken a course in medieval cathedrals at Trinity College at Oxford University, hiked in the Alps and the Black Forest, spent two . . . um . . .interesting days in the Azores after landing with two out of four engines malfunctioning, and eaten in restaurants with one, two and three Michelin stars in The Netherlands, France and Germany. Travel has been one of the real joys of my life.

That trip to London was the beginning of my education.