Wendy Dale

This book has the unfortunate problem of being almost funny which is worse than not being funny at all. It's good thing that the book is short since it's hard to deal with Dale's whining, irresponsibility, promiscuity, and apparent high opinion of her own wit. Really, for someone who spent as much time in Latin America in the situations she describes she certainly seems uninformed and condescending. Since much of the book describes her living in Costa Rica and Colombia to free the man she show more loves from prison and make a life for themselves it seems odd that she describes it as "vacation" in the title, but then again maybe that's her problem -- it wasn't life, it was vacation.

"Unlike happiness, which seemed to be the result of wisdom, acquired experience, or a lifetime spent in the self-help section of Barnes and Noble, irresponsibility could only be purchased. It was the ultimate luxury item. Poor people never got to be irresponsible without suffering for it." p. 64

"Memorization wasn't a type of learning; it was the opposite of learning. The minute you memorized a fact, you took it to be true." p. 256

"When you are a child everything is bright and new and amazing, and that's what going to an unfamiliar place is like -- foreign places are always new. All of a sudden you are transported to an infantile state, unable to speak the language and unaware of the rules. Travel is like the high drama of youth. It's the best and worst at the same time. One minute you are flung to the depths of despair, the next, you feel the giddy, exaggerated joy of an adolescent . . . Of course, even foreign places grow familiar given enough time; even the novelty grows old. Some would argue that this is what makes travel pointless. And in a sense, it's true -- childhoods never last. But everyone deserves one." - p. 322 show less

I liked this travel memoir, especially the parts in Lebanon and Costa Rica. I especially liked how Dale learns how to find a sense of home wherever she goes.

Funny, smart, and honest, this amazing book is much better than you might expect it to be. It's actually a journey through love, danger, travel, and (to sound cliched) finding oneself. Wendy Dale is an ADORABLE author. I love her!

Wendy Dale's memoir started out hilarious, and slowly spiraled downward into monotony, poverty and depression. I was incredibly disappointed in the final two thirds of this book, especially for how much I enjoyed the beginning.