Writer Emma Donoghue's travel highlights

Emma Donoghue is a Canadian-Irish novelist, playwright and screenwriter best known for her book and film Room, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. She lives in Paris with her French partner and their children, but travels a lot to research and promote her books and movies. The Wonder, a film adaptation of her novel, will be released on November 16th.

My last trip to London was when we lived in Paris.

The premiere of my film The Wonder at the London Film Festival was one of the highlights of my life.

I'm going to go to Dublin for the premiere of The Wonder. I will need to catch up with my siblings and family, walk by the sea, and have a dark chocolate chip scone at my favorite Dublin cafe.

I usually sketch out detailed itineraries for trips that fall through, but I am embarrassed to admit I enjoy the planning aspect of travel. If there is a spare hour, I will cram a museum into it. I don't know what downtime is.

There are five top recommendations for where to eat in Dublin.

I like trains because they are fast, less damaging to the environment, and you can see a lot from the windows.

Ebooks give me a sense of security that I have dozens of hours of reading with me, and I always have a few books on my phone. I usually have a good TV series downloaded that I save to watch with my beloved, so on my own it will be a comedy or a soapy show.

How I travel.

Soft fuzzy bedsocks are a travel hack that I swear by. We live in Montparnasse, Paris this year and the Cimetire Montparnasse is full of interesting tombstones such as this one which was clearly a pianist.

For me, the long curve of the Promenade des Anglais will always be haunted by the image of our son and daughter zooming along on their push-scooter when they were younger.

When I was a child, my family rented a house in the Irish countryside and I woke up covered in cowpats. This was like an alien invasion for a city child.

There is a postcard from Nice.

It must have been early for me to travel on my first plane. I remember most of the trips I took before 18 - to France, to tour the Chteaux of the Loire Valley, and a weekend in London where we saw Roger Rees in Hamlet.

There's more to this gorgeous Art Deco city than Euro-bureaucracy and I think more people should visit. The last part of France's Mediterranean coast before the Spanish border is also great for snorkeling.

There are 15 of the best journeys in Europe.

Right now, it would be Skellig Michael. My most recent novel, Haven, is set on a uniquely spiky island off Ireland's Kerry Coast in the year 600, but the trip I'd booked to land on the island was canceled due to Covid, and I haven't been able to fit that trip into my schedule That is where I would like to be transported.

There are 10 of the best beaches in Ireland.