Six considerations, held to the end

I had almost dropped Sicily because of the walking. My parents are both past eighty. They found a house near Noto where everything was on one floor, and the cook would feed the children at six so the adults could eat properly at nine. On the third day a photographer came and stayed almost out of sight. My mother has one of those pictures framed now, and she is not an easy woman to please.

Lapland felt very personal for us. The Northern Lights, private ice floating, stargazing and quiet spa time in Rovaniemi. Everything was taken care of, but we still felt completely on our own time.

I am on a plane forty weeks a year, so holidays are usually wasted on me. I picked a camp out of a magazine and they told me plainly it was not the right one. I pushed back. They were right. One morning we sat with a tracker for three hours and saw nothing at all, and it was the best morning of the trip.