What's your earliest holiday memory?The brown-and- orange stripes of a 1970s camper, the smell of hay being made, testing the yellow of buttercups against my chin and playing in a treehouse, all on my parents' farm, in Co Westmeath, writes
SARAH BROWNE
What was your worst holiday?I prefer to remember the disasters as adventures. There was an experience of travelling on a Greek ferry that's near irredeemable, though. The intention was to make a scenic route to Cyprus, but instead the journey involved hours of inexplicable waiting before changing to a safer ship, and then days without a cabin, catching a cold, eating bitter bread and feeling generally harried.
What was your best holiday?I often combine work with travel and holidaying. One of the most special trips was hiking the GR11 trail in the Spanish Pyrenees with my boyfriend Gareth after graduating. We hiked the whole length of the Spanish-French border, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, some 500 miles in all, with our supplies on our backs.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?Something epic, like the Orient-Express, is appealing. I'd love to spend more time travelling in Iceland, too.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?Nobody other than my partner, family and friends.
What's your favourite place in Ireland?Lovely Leitrim. It's not quite like those 1980s tourist films, but it seems I'm another one of those people who are conspiring to make it less of a well-kept secret. I've really enjoyed living there over the last few years and have made great friends. Coming from suburbia, it's a real pleasure to live somewhere so beautiful and where it's so easy to go hillwalking, camping or lake swimming just on the spur of the moment.
Your recommended holiday reading?I always aspire to catch up on my reading while travelling and also get recommendations from friends, keeping a few different books going at the same time. The list for the next trip is Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn, Meaghan Morris's Ecstasy and Economicsand some JG Ballard.
Where will you go to next?I'm currently on a road trip in Europe that takes in Eileen Gray's house, which is called E.1027 and is in the south of France, a utopian-studies conference in Portugal and an Esperanto congress in Poland. I'm travelling with Gareth again, and we'll be kept company by an Esperanto- language course and Ulysseson CD in the van.
- Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy are representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale until November 22nd (www.irelandvenice.ie)
- In conversation with Genevieve Carbery