"One Trip Abroad" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

. The story first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on October 11, 1930. Some of the story's content was later re-used by Fitzgerald in his novel Tender Is the Night

Tender is the Night

Tender Is the Night is a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues...

 (1934).

The story consists of two characters, Nelson and Nicole Kelly, two wealthy American expatriates who travel through Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Unlike much 1920s literature in which European residence is adventurous and cosmopolitan, the two experience both moral and physical decline in their marriage and in their bodies, symbolized by the Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger

In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...

s whom they encounter at the end of the short story.