And she meets Naohiro, a widowed Japanese man who takes Steinbach to remote, memorable Parisian haunts and becomes a romantic interest for her. She meets Liliane, an unusual French woman who takes her out for dinners and influences her newfound fashion sense. As much as she claims she wants to spend her time alone, discovering independence, she spends the majority of her time seeking out friendships. However Steinbach does not have the journey she intended. She has the quintessential Parisian experience. She sees fabulous architecture, eats delicious food, has good wine and meets interesting people.

Her journalist's eye for detail is noted and appreciated while she is relaying her experiences. Steinbach takes the reader on a guided tour of Paris, frequenting small cafés and unknown restaurants as well as some major landmarks, such as the Champs Elysées and the Louvre. As such, Steinbach rents a small flat and proceeds to explore her new surroundings and herself. She imagines a metamorphosis of self a year in which she will become a different woman entirely.

She envisions the trip as a journey of independence, in which she will attempt to understand what it truly means to be a woman in the middle phase of her life, her children now grown and gone, and herself divorced.

Without Reservations is a travel memoir by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Alice Steinbach, detailing her yearlong travels throughout Europe as a self-proclaimed 'independent woman.'ĭeciding she needs a drastic change in her life, Steinbach takes a leave of absence from her job as a journalist to move to France. Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman Beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach’s journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery.Review | Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach “I had fallen into the habit of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” But who was she away from the people and things that defined her? In this exquisite book, Steinbach searches for the answer to this question in some of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. “For years I’d made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.” But somehow she had become dependent in quite another way. 'In many ways, I was an independent woman,' writes Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Alice Steinbach. WITHOUT RESERVATIONS: THE TRAVELS OF AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN

Without reservations by alice steinbach