The Grand Tour

As the Queen Elizabeth docked at Southampton last week, 50 suntanned Californians tripped from ship to shore, bound for the London boat train and a fortnight's tour of the British Isles. A wan sun, hidden for days by fog, peeked out at them, just in time to make good the British Travel Association's current slogan: "Spring comes early to Britain; why don't you?"

The Californians were the advance guard of a horde of 400,000 U.S. tourists who will go to Europe this year. Some will travel in luxury and in style, paying up to $2,340 for first class round-trip passage on the Queens and $1,790 on the America; some will rough it in the "dormitory ships," which carry student tours for as little as $280 round trip. Nearly all the 31 passenger ships (seven more than last year) plying the ocean lanes from the U.S. to Europe are already sold out for the summer. Though the rebuilt lie de France, absent from the Atlantic run for eight years, will not make its first trip for three months, it is already sold out until October. The airlines, reinforced with new equipment, are booked solid too; they expect to fly 150,000 tourists abroad at $630 (to London) to $808 (to Rome) round trip.

Come On Over. Last week everyone this side of the Iron Curtain was beckoning the tourists and reaching for the $500 million in Yankee dollars that the visitors would leave behind them. Everywhere, hotels were getting a sprucing-up, and red tape an unraveling (many countries- had abolished visas). If not yet back to prewar standards and costs, foreign travel was getting simple enough to be good fun again.

Britain turned on its street lights again last week after nearly a decade of nocturnal gloom. Hoping to entertain 130,000 U.S. guests and 430,000 from Europe, the British government, which had taken over most hotels during the war, had turned almost all of them back again. Clothing was at last unrationed, but not petrol: visitors would get the 1948 allowance of 600 miles for the first two weeks, 400 for the second, plus enough gas to go to &. from their furthest destination. Meat was scarce, British cooking was as dull as ever, and prices were comparatively high. But the intellectual fare was good. The Shakespeare season was scheduled to open this month at Stratford on Avon, the Malvern Festival to be revived with a new Shaw play in July, and the third Edinburgh Festival, in the island's stateliest city, to be celebrated in August.

April in Paris. France, always the most popular stopover for Americans, was far gayer and cheaper than Britain, whose pound is stubbornly pegged at $4.03. Two months ago the franc hit an alltime high of 530 to the dollar on the black market; last week it was down to 360 and it might hit 320 when the tourist rush sets in. (The free franc was still 318.) A knowing traveler could get by on $7 a day for food and lodging.

Early arrivals found that April in Paris was still wonderful. The chestnuts were in bloom, and so was the night life in the tripper traps of old Montmartre. The landscape painters were busy by day on the Seine bridges, and Josephine Baker, the oft-warmed-over toast of gay Paree, was going through 32 costume changes a night at the Folies Bergeres. The grande saison de Paris would offer 150 spectacles, from colored lighting displays of the Versailles fountains to an amateur night for drink-mixers at the Hotel Continental. France was also pleased to announce that even the trains were running on time. One day last week, for the first time since the war, every train in the land departed and arrived on schedule.

Italy, by far the cheapest for travel (a good meal costs only a dollar), was also anxious to please. Though the prim government forbade Italians to wear two-piece bathing suits or abbreviated trunks on the public beaches, Americans were free to wear what they wanted at such international resorts as Portofino, Lido and Capri. This year there would be classical plays for tourist audiences, performed under floodlights in the ruins of Pompeii. Like other Italians, the pickpockets were getting ready for the tourists. Rome newspapers reported last week that they were brushing up their art at special schools, where artful dodgers of long practice instructed beginners on the finer points of fanning pockets painlessly. The unrationed Irish were plugging low-cost train and motor tours. In Portugal travelers could relax in one of Europe's few unscarred landscapes, and rub shoulders with out-of-season royalty at the gaming tables of Estoril, Lisbon's lush suburb. At Stockholm they could buy a 30-day, $995 "inside Scandinavia" tour, complete with motor trips along the Arctic Ocean, yachting parties, and introductions to government officials. The Danes, who had run out of hotel rooms early in the season last year, were building a string of new hotels. Out to please everyone, they were preparing to stage Hamlet in the courtyard of 365- year-old Kronborg Castle at Elsinore -- * with a company from the U.S.

-Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland.

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