By Alice Steinbach.
Back in the 90's, Alice Steinbach was a newspaper reporter/columnist in Baltimore, with two grown children and nothing to hold her back. Wanting to rediscover her old enthusiastic, adventurous self, she arranged to take off most of a year to spend time in Europe. Yes, she did "Eat, Pray, Love" before Liz Gilbert did. She even met a man, though (a) she met hers early on, and (b) they seem to be a repeated travel fling thing (they meet up repeatedly during the book and even afterwards) than a case of trying to figure out who moves to who's country. She spends time in Paris, England, and Italy, makes a lot of temporarily good friends, takes a class, survives an assault on the streets of Rome, learns to go with the flow, and otherwise enjoys life on the road so much that according to the interview with the author at the end, she quit her job and traveled some more after that.
I'm attempting to read a few books on inspirational travel in preparation for a class on the topic, and this certainly fit the bill. It's not the world's most memorable memoir to me (Alice strikes me as a pleasant, genteel woman, but not a spectacular personality), but it's pleasant enough and gets its point across. If you need to think about making changes in your life via the use of travel, and how one adapts to a new environment and new people, this isn't a bad read on the topic.
Three stars.
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