If you have read the travel blog recently, you may have come across a guest post from Jennifer Coburn about traveling to Europe on a budget. It’s definitely worth a read, particularly if you are interested in stretching some dollars to travel.
The guest post came on the heels of my reading her memoir, “We’ll Always Have Paris.” If you love travel books, you should definitely pick this one up.
More than just tales of European travel with her young daughter (which are fabulous!), the book covers engaging emotional ground. Jennifer’s father died young. At a certain point in her life, she had a disquieting feeling that she would also die young (despite no medical evidence to indicate any problem), and wanted to make as many memories with her daughter as possible. So, rather than focusing on things like fixing the bathroom, she started working out ways to create those bonding times.
Four trips are taken over the course of the book beginning when Katie is eight and ending when she’s just past 16. Tidbits of what pushed Jennifer are sprinkled throughout giving the reader the feeling that you are driving down the roads of her past just as sure as you are reading about her adventures in cross-country travel in Italy. It adds a poignancy that elevates the book beyond the standard travel material. I ended up rooting for Jennifer as she grew as a person, as much as I hoped that the strange man wouldn’t follow them back to their hotel.
Don’t get me wrong, this book is not just about personal reflections—this book is packed with travel (London, Paris, all over Italy and Spain, and Amsterdam). At each description of a new city on one of their journeys, I declared that I wanted to go there next in my own travels. The food, the views, the people—it all sounded like something I need to experience right now! And that includes cities I’ve already visited. Seeing them through their eyes, made me want to revisit and re-experience as an adult.
Read the book and be prepared for wanderlust to overtake you.