Worst vacation: Florida with my best friend and some of her college friends. Her friends brought their super loud, trashy friend with them and I was embarrassed by them whenever we went out. I ended up lying and saying I had to leave early just to get the F out.

Dream: A month in Asia and Oceania! I long to see Tokyo, Angkor Wat, Ayers Rock, and New Zealand (thanks, LOTR movies!).

Best: A trip to Disney World with my now-husband at the very beginning of our relationship. What could have been a horror of families and screaming children and enormous amounts of money spent on crappy food was instead romantic and fun and delicious. We spent every night dancing and drinking at the adult-themed downtown area. I have an entire photo album where I am smiling so big my face might explode.

Worst: A “surprise” holiday in a cabin with my entire extended in-law family. It was cold and tiny and miserable and no one thought to warn me ahead of time that we were staying for four days and not just an afternoon. Plus I was on my period and totally unprepared.

Dream: A sailing and diving trip in the Caribbean, living aboard a boat. I did one as a teenager and would appreciate it so much more now as an adult.

Worst — most uncomfortable was the trip to Noel Missouri with my family as a child, to stay in $1 a night cabins. The mattress broke when dad sat on it, the bathroom wall had a hole big enough to put your head through to the outside, there was a wasp’s nest in the living room (and I was stung), and someone had burned wood inside the electric (non wood burning) oven. That was 45 years ago and we STILL talk about it. Being with a closeknit family in that situation was fun, though the experience wasn’t! The worst vacation as far as nonenjoyment was the last one I took with my (now ex) husband. I’d won the trip to an exotic place, he insisted on going (I’d have rather taken one of my children), it was horrible, and our marriage broke up soon after when I discovered he’d been having affairs for years.

Best Vacation: Much as I’ve loved many, many trips, I think the best of my life so far was the tour of Egypt with my Mom and the Archaeological Institute of America. I’d never been on a tour before (much prefer finding my own places), but that one was INCREDIBLE. I don’t think anything will ever top actually seeing the mummy of Rameses II, complete with his oddly-shaped head and aristocratic bearing. Riding a camel up to the pyramids, entirely swathed in such thick fog we couldn’t even see them until we got to the top, and then BAM! It cleared, and there they stood, towering over the millennia. Walking through Luxor, imagining the monks running the country in secret cabals and worshipping Pharoah who walked there as a god; staring in awe at the bas-reliefs at Abu Simbel, Rameses II’s temple. Yup. Best ever. (No slagging on my honeymoon, which was unbeatable in other ways.)

Dream Vacation: Right now? Australia & New Zealand, or a photo safari in Africa (elephants, gorillas, giraffes, you name it). I want to see those landscapes and animals before they’re gone! (I think I have longer with Aus & NZ.)

But my recent trip to Colombia was pretty awesome to– lots of unexpected fun stuff happened.

Dream vacation would be somewhere in the Mediterranean.

Best vacation? Gosh, it’s hard to choose. My sister and I have taken several great vacations together, so I’d probably choose the one that started it all: backpacking around Europe after I graduated college and she finished her year of studying abroad in Rouen, France.

Worst vacation? Family roadtrip across the Southwest at the age of 12 (waay too cool for the fam), in mid-summer in a car without air conditioning. Highlights? Boating Lake Havasu at >110degrees F; my mother fighting with the desk clerk at the Disneyland Hotel; staying at a dump across the street with a flooded bathroom, thanks to the jacuzzi upstairs; my younger sister’s endless singing of “Little Kitty Fufu”.

Dream vacation: South America. Boating down a river through the Amazon, climbing the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, visiting Tiputini in Ecuador, then taking a small nature cruise out to the Galapagos. I’ll make it there someday!