Alice Steinbach Knihy

American journalist Alice Steinbach took a year off to live in five cities - Paris, Venice, Milan, London and Oxford - when she realized she had entered a new phase of life. Her sons had graduated from college; she had been divorced for a long time; she was a successful journalist. While there was nothing really wrong with her life, she felt restless. Could she live independently of her family, her friends, her career? Steinbach searches for the answer to this provocative question firstly in Paris, where she finds a soul mate in a Japanese man; in Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to marry, and in the evocative cities of Oxford and Venice. Her trip is peppered with accounts of the exotic strangers she meets, her reflections on life and the observational postcards she wrote to herself during her year away.

A few years ago, Alice Steinbach, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist decided to take a break from her life. And studying side by side with people preparing for careers in these various fields gives Steinbach a second chance at some roads not taken - a chance to reconnect with her past, when so many options were still open to her.

When Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Alice Steinbach decided to take a year off to explore Europe and rediscover what it was like to be an independent woman, she left her job, family, friends and routine behind. The result, WITHOUT RESERVATIONS, became a bestseller and inspired women everywhere to take that leap, if not in reality, at least in their imaginations.But having opened the door to a new way of living, Steinbach found herself unwilling to return to the old routine. She quit her job and left home again, only this time her objective was to find a way to combine three of her greatest passions: travelling, writing and learning. EDUCATING ALICE is the intimate, funny and richly entertaining story of her adventures roaming the world to conquer new challenges, large and small. She learns how to cook at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, tackles the intricacies of traditional Japanese arts in Kyoto, makes a pilgrimage to Jane Austen's birthplace, revisits the past in Prague, surrenders to the spontaneous joy of music and memories in Havana, uncovers the secrets of border collie training in Scotland, and much, much more. Along the way, Steinbach learns more from the people she connects with on her travels and unplanned encounters than any of her lessons.