I'm highly qualified as a travel writer.This is me, in my passport photo, 1975, before my first trip "abroad".

I stayed on the road for 20 years.

In between my many years of foreign wanderings I worked as a receptionist, gift shop sales lady, luxury hotel concierge, clothing store manager, book shop clerk, office temp, retail jeweler, horologist, auction house executive, and Faberge expert.

I've also worked as an au pair, a chamber maid, a jewelry historian, and in a factory making plastic bottles for bleach.

Obviously, with all this job experience, I am very well-qualifed to be the boss of everybody. This meshes perfectly with my ability to be very judgemental.

But I digress.

This is me, totally sophisticated, after my first trip to Paris in 1975.

As I said, I stayed on the road for 20 years, getting (A) lots of life experience and (B) really good at living out of a suitcase.

I wrote my first book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, when I ceased to roam as a wanderer and settled down in a little village on the Long Island Sound for a decade. It's all about what there is to find at the end of the road.

At the end of those ten years, I got married and began to wander again.

I wrote my new book, Le Road Trip, about a thousand-mile road trip I took in France with my favorite traveling companion (husband, see above).

In real life, my head does not look this huge.