I have had both a dip and a personal. When I was living in Brussels with my father, we traveled with our Diplomatic passport - which is black. That was from 1977 to 1994. After that, I received a no-fee blue passport issued when my husband and I moved to Japan with the Navy. Now I carry a plan ol' blue one.

And as a note on the Diplomatic passport, it came in very handy one drunken night, senior year at the waterloo lion. Let's just say that that it allowed me and my friends to avoid an unwanted overnight stay. It was one of the only times I carried my actual passport with me as I had just turned my ID card back into the communite as I was headed to college in a few days. The Gendarmes simply didn't want to deal with the bureaucratic BS that came with it. I had no idea until then how important Diplomatic status could be.