Edward and Europe

 It took me five years to persuade Edward to fly to Europe. He flew all over North America for various reasons during his time working at NRC but flying across the ocean was not something that he wanted to do. His first flight was somewhat disastrous as he experienced back spasms and it was days before he was over that but one of my cousins gave him a tube of Voltaren and that did the trick. He loved our travels with my cousins that was planned to precede our tour and then we took a three week tour of England, Scotland and Wales which he also greatly enjoyed. The return trip was as difficult for him as the trip there. The stewardess was quite concerned about him and brought him gingerale many times. She was so very nice and kind. As soon as we landed he was fine although he did again experience back spasms for a short time. I actually thought he would never try to go again. That was the spring of 2008. Sometime in 2009 he suddenly decided we needed to do a European tour which quite shocked me. I had not really mentioned traveling again other than trips we did here as he loved to go down into the New England States and New York to see where his ancestors had lived and back to southwestern Ontario where he had grown up. We also did a tour in the Maritimes for nearly four weeks with a tour company. We flew to Winnipeg for a Conference and drove all about the area around Winnipeg. I was very keen to go to Europe and we quickly signed up for a three week tour that included starting in London, England then the ferry to France, on to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and then finishing in France.  He had a wonderful time; no problems on the flight and thoroughly enjoyed everything planned in the tour. Our flight home was a peaceful time where we watched a movie. A short break then as he came down with a mysterious illness that eventually was solved with a pacemaker and in 2013 we were back in the air to England once again where we walked the streets of London for two weeks. We saw everything that we had ever wanted to see in London. It was a marvelous trip. In 2014 we took a country tour of France for a couple of weeks and that involved going to where Ed's Huguenot families had lived (that possibility quite attracted him to this tour) plus many many other wonderful sites. Our free time in Paris was spent walking the streets as our hotel was in the centre of all the Historic District there. In 2016 we took our last European trip for our 50th Wedding Anniversary and it was about four weeks touring all of the British Isles. This too was a much loved trip. He did want to tour the Rhine and we had booked for that but his illness was creeping up on him and we decided to cancel (indeed the trip was eventually cancelled because of COVID-19). The last couple of months we talked a lot about the trips that we had taken. Most of them I have built a powerpoint file with text and he wanted me to do all of them which I shall do using the indexes he prepared of all the pictures. My projects for the future are starting to get formed in my mind. They will remind me of all our lovely trips together.