Mary Banotti, author and former MEP
Your earliest holiday memory?Wet holidays in Courtown, in Co Wexford. There were six in our family. We would have gone there regularly, or to somewhere like that. To this day I can't understand why anybody goes on holidays to unpleasant little houses. I used to love going to Kerry to stay with my Auntie Mary. There were lots of boys in that family, and that added a certain glamour to it.
What was your worst holiday?I travelled a lot on my own during the 1960s, and I found myself in what was then Rhodesia. I ended up in hospital listening to these awful racist people running down the locals. At the time I thought I was dying. It was a nightmare I never want to repeat.
Your best holiday?My daughter, Tania, and I and a friend went to Laos about two years ago. We had the most amazing holiday, partly because it's still a relatively unfound place - even though this is changing rapidly - and also as a former anti-Vietnam person. We were on the Mekong delta, which is the great river that runs through Vietnam, where the Ho Chi Minh Trail was. More bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War than on the whole of Europe during the second World War. We were there for two weeks. There was a wonderful simplicity. Laos runs parallel to Vietnam. We absolutely loved it. You'd wake up every morning to this street market with exquisite vegetables and live frogs in buckets.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would your dream holiday be?I'd like to go to New Zealand. I think I dread going to places that have been discovered by the tourist industry. New Zealand is relatively untouched and has an amazing history.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you? Tania, because she's such an adventurous, hands-on traveller. Nothing seems to stop her.
Your favourite place in Ireland?The west, Connemara outside Roundstone. I love the landscape; I love the sky when it's not raining. I like the people I know there, and I have a boat. I absolutely love going out in my boat on the sea, fishing for mackerel.
What book would you recommend to bring on holiday?I'd recommend a book that I read this summer, The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell. It was just as fresh as when I read it 30 years ago. It's one of the great books about places ever written. It's four stories, interweaving with each other, telling the same events from a different perspective.
Where to next?I think Mexico. I would like to go back - to remember being in Mexico in the 1960s, when I was poor and travelling around. I travelled on a greyhound bus. I'd like to see what it's like now.
In conversation with Catherine Foley