My holidays

What’s your earliest holiday memory? Something from Switzerland

What's your earliest holiday memory?Something from Switzerland. I am originally from Zurich and lived within an hour of the ski resorts as a child. We always went skiing in the mountains during holidays. I remember sun, snow, falling a lot, cold fingers and cold bums.

What was your worst holiday?My worst experiences were missing flights and connections in the Far East, particularly in China. There are often no hotel rooms available, and I spent nights in schools or army barracks or at awful airports. In China flights were often cancelled, and you either spent one or two nights at the airport or travelled three hours into town to find there was no accommodation.

What was your best holiday?My best holidays are every summer getting a car ferry with my family from Rosslare to Cherbourg and driving to Switzerland. We don't know where we will stay or stop or how long the trip will last. It usually takes five days. We take a different route every time and don't book ahead. We stop whenever we feel like stopping and never take the motorway. We have discovered magnificent hotels and restaurants this way. We usually swim twice a day at a lake or a river and have a picnic. We just take it as it goes.

If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?I would go back to Bali with my family. I was there before and loved the beaches, the landscape and the people. It was incredibly beautiful, and I would go back there at any time. Now the children are older I would like to show them that magnificent island.

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If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?My family. In my profession I spend quite some time of the year outside Ireland, so I don't see them every day. So if I can I spend my holidays with my children.

What's your favourite place in Ireland?Definitely Dublin. I have lived here for 10 years and I know it inside out. I live in Clontarf, more or less on the seafront. Clontarf offers a little countryside, but you have the city 10 minutes away and Howth nearby.

Your recommended holiday reading?I am a big newspaper reader, and I read German, French and Irish papers. I love reading travel sections, and I think they are an important part of the paper.

Where will you go to next?I often combine holidays and work. After the opera in Dublin I will do a production of Rigolettoin Italy, in a Renaissance town near Bologna. For that month I will combine hard work and lots of free time and enjoy the landscape of this fantastic part of Italy.

Dieter Kaegi, the artistic director of Opera Ireland, is directing Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa, which is part of Opera Ireland's spring season, with Mozart's Don Giovanni, at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from February 28th to March 8th

In conversation with Genevieve Carbery