The Travels of an Independent Woman.
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Alice Steinbach, makes a dream come true - she takes a year off, to live in foreign cities (Paris, Venice, London, Oxford) and sees who she might become, away from obligations, as an independent woman.
Featuring a wonderful design including postcards Alice wrote and sent home to herself, so she'd have a record of her spontaneous thoughts at special moments during her year apart, this book records an inner and outer journey. While there was nothing really wrong with her life, she felt restless: something inside herself was pushing her to do what she'd always wanted to do yet had deferred for other responsibilities: to travel and to find out who she might be, independently, and as an independent woman.
Alice's adventures begin immediately upon her arrival in Paris. She falls into a romance with Naohiro, a Japanese man she meets on a train to the French countryside. She encounters exotic travel companions in cafes, in restaurants, on the street, and as her unplanned travels lead her throughout Europe. She indulges her whims - buying a fashionable and unusual Chinese-print dress straight out of a Parisian shop window, travelling to Sacre Coeur late at night to observe the lights, flying to London and then to Oxbridge to study English history, and then on to Italy, where she observes and relishes local customs - and food.
Colourful, inspiring, beautifully told, 'Without Reservations' takes us deeply into a woman's life, as she evolves a new one.
