As a child, across the border to Canada from NY.
As an adult, Costa Rica on my honeymoon.
Canada for me too (Montreal area), but since my Mom is from there, I won’t count it.
My first foreign country was Grenada, courtesy of the United States Navy (not the fireworks in '83, just some LEO (Law Enforcement Ops) in '88.
Sasebo, Japan.
Went to a KFC; got a drumstick with the foot still on it.
Canada, with my family for Expo 67.
Later excursions:
1972, Canada again for the solar eclipse (cloudy, darn it).
1976, England, Scotland, Wales.
1977, Italy.
First trip abroad was when I was 18, went to the Canaries with five of my friends to celebrate finishing school. Was the last time we were all in the same place together too.
Mum and Dad were bored with England and Mum saw an ad in the paper for airplane engineers in Iran, soooooo Dad went along with it and I went to live in Tehran at the age of 6. My mum remembers trying to cross the road (no pedestrian crossings and cars everywhere) with three crying girls holding on to her for life, wondering ‘what the hell have I done?!’
I think I might have gone to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls when I was little, but the first I really remember was Dakar, in Senegal, on my way to the Congo to join my father when I was ten, followed soon after by Ghana and Nigeria - and then what was then called Leopoldville in the Republic of the Congo.
Wow, a lot of people whose first foreign trip was to Montreal! I hope it was good, folks 
China. I’d never been anywhere and decided joining the Peace Corps would be fun so off I went to rural Sichuan province. It was amazing.
As far as I remember, it was Sweden, when I was 10. My parents are infected, big time, with the travel bug, but they had this idea that we should be shown places around Denmark before going somewhere foreign. Since then, I’ve been to lots of places with my parents as well as on my own. First time on my own - well, it was with school, but no parents at least - was Holland whan I was 15. Second time was New England, USA, for summer language school when I was 18.
Oh, it was. I was a kid riding in the back of the station wagon (it used to be okay) when we went to Expo '67. Had a blast, too, I still remember it.
But the first stop was at Niagara Falls. Yes indeed, the view is much better from your side.
Been back to Montreal many times since - but not in the winter except for business trips. It’s easier to get to than many Yanks realize. For instance, I can leave my house just outside Boston and be sipping an aperitif in Place Jacques-Cartier in just 5 hours. And les Prix Impossible at the Ikea on Cote de Liesse are worth the cost in gas, too.
Hong Kong, when I was twelve.
England, when I was about 21 or 22.
There was a music festival (Holidays in the Sun) that I really wanted to go to, a ton of my favorite bands were playing, and Shane MacGowan and the Popes (!) were headlining Celtic Day at one of the venues.
Didn’t think I was going to save the money, so I gave up hope… Until my friend Amanda started freaking out about a month before the show. She’d bought 2 tickets for her and a friend, and said friend was supposed to help Amanda’s mother move into her new house, and get paid $10 an hour for moving, unpacking, painting, etc. Amanda’s mom was going to pay someone to do it anyway, so why not pay a friend so that Amanda wouldn’t have to go to England alone? But he wasn’t doing his job, and she needed a friend with a passport. Well, I had a passport from a high school trip to France that ended up not happening, so I scrambled that month to get together the necessary money by doing the aforementioned moving, and also selling my plasma and pawning most things I owned of value.
Long story short, I got the money together and we went. It. was. awesome. Had no money for food (literally. We got the English brekky at the B&B we stayed at for 4 days, but at the hostel… we got 1 meal. We bought chips & gravy from a little stand at the shore, and ate at a Thai place. That’s 7 meals for 7 days, unless you count the biscuits a kind gentlemen gave us when we asked directions to the train station). I brought PowerBars, so at least I ate, but poor Amanda didn’t poop the whole time we were there. I wasn’t being mean, she just didn’t like PowerBars. We were also seriously dehydrated, our pee was brown.
But I got to see Shane MacGowan (!) so it was all worth it. And we got sh*tfaced at 2 in the afternoon in London our last day there. All told, we got to see Barrow-in-Furness, Morecombe, Lancaster, and London. Fantastic.
Sorry, GorillaMan, I’m gonna push you out of the ‘youngest’ spot. Ireland at the tender age of 8 days, due to my mother’s father being on the brink of death.
After that, I think France, at the age of about three. My parents got very frustrated - they wanted to go for a walk in a big forest, and I refused to go, as I was convinced it was overrun with Roman soldiers. Asterix has a lot to answer for.
Iran, when I was 3.
This was during the Pro-US Shah days of course. My dad had a three year contract with Bell Helicopters to photograph the rotor assemblies of Iranian Air Force helicopters in flight. They were having some issues, I don’t recall the details. We lived in Tehran and then Isfahan. We only stayed for just over a year - we all know what happened in 1979! :eek:
Hey MelCthefirst, when were you in Iran? Maybe our dads crossed paths at some point!
First foreign country visited was Italy. Stayed at a hotel in Rimini, I forget the name, it’s been over 40 years.
My wife and I couldn’t believe what we were seeing, a fantastic smorgasbord of new and exciting things to do, places to visit, museums, art galleries, old buildings etc. etc.
That first holiday of ours was without a doubt the best ever. The wanderlust was awake and ready to go, over the years it was not disappointed
First (and only) foreign country was Mexico. Sea of Cortez - my dad’s parents took us. My brother and I stayed with them in the camper, my parents stayed at a beautiful hotel that overlooked the water and had flowers spilling from every balcony. It seems to me that the airstrip from Catch-22 was there - and my brother caught a shark when they fished.
I was only like 7 or so.
Haiti when I was 14. We stayed in a beautiful hillside place called Le Chateau and in the evenings I could hear the voodoo drums from our balcony. We flew to an island Dad and some others were developing called Tortugua and at night could see the sun set behind Cuba. Tortugua was completely pristine and the villagers lived in grass huts. Our lot on the north side, a beautiful cove with white sand, was a scene out of a movie. Everything was in place to build some roads, a small resort, school, etc. Then the Haitian government started demanding bribes and it all went away.
This must be common all along the border. It’s what took me and a carload of friends to Calgary from Montana after high school graduation.
Me, too! Except from the other side. All through my childhood, my family spent summers up by Glacier Park, Montana. We would go to Waterton a lot. I don’t remember the first time I went to Canada, but I’m sure that would have been where I went. Not sure how old . . . a really little kid, though.
But Alberta never felt “foreign” to me at all; it was just like Montana. In fact, when I was trying to remember my first trip to another country, it didn’t even occur to me to count Canada. I went to Hawaii at 18 and that felt way more exotic and “foreign” to me than Alberta ever did.
First trip to a place that felt to me like a foreign country was Germany at 16. I haven’t been back to Europe since, darn it, but I’m going to Germay this October – woohoo!