Amsterdam is a favourite holiday destination for Scots author and city girl Sara Sheridan

SARA SHERIDAN is a bestselling Scots author. She has been writing for 20 years, with women’s historical fiction a speciality.

Her new book, On Starlit Seas (Black & White), is out now.

Her other titles include Secret of the Sands, Brighton Belle and London Calling.

She has also launched lifestyle and clothing brand Urban Reivers.

Sara, 48, lives in Edinburgh with husband Alan.

She has a daughter, Molly, aged 24.

I split up with my first husband when Molly was fairly young and, being a single mum, it could be hard getting away.

So, I made a list of places I wanted to see. I made a promise to myself that when Molly left home I’d be footloose and fancy-free and go to them all.

As it happened, when Molly did move out I met my second husband and, as he has a proper job – unlike mine as a writer – it hasn’t been that easy to keep my promise. But he’s worth it!

Over the past five or so years I have been able to tick off a fair few destinations, though, and they’ve almost all been cities. I’m a real city girl. Tallinn, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Berlin, Istanbul and Tel Aviv are a few of them. Dubrovnik is one I want to see soon.

Of the ones I have seen, Amsterdam is a real favourite. It’s a city that grows with you.

The things you discover when you are older, like the fabulous museums, are different to those you do as a youngster.

Although it sounds like a lot of places, I’m not even halfway through my list. And, anyway, most are just long weekends and short breaks.That’s because I spend such a lot of my time attending book festivals and fit in breaks between them.

There are, remarkably, 155 book festivals in the UK – 70 is the most I’ve done in a year and it nearly killed me. I’ve seen some nice places, though, with Bath and London my favourites.

All this variety is so different to vacations when I was a kid.

We spent almost every holiday in Italy in a place called Forte dei Marmi where we’d rent a villa. The whole extended family would go.

It was so dreamy and nothing beat sitting outside eating pizza and playing on the dodgems.

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