A British writer living in France, Nicola is well and truly spoilt. Home is a hillside house with Lake Geneva and Jura Mountain view in Messery, a village 20 minutes from the French-Swiss border in Haute-Savoie. The bug bit in 1990 when she bussed and boated it from Jakarta to East Timor to document the civil war there as a BA literature student at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Post-graduate studies in Islamic Societies & Cultures took her to London's School of Oriental & African Studies and on to North Wales to study journalism and report on local affairs for the North Wales Weekly News. In 1994 she moved to Latvia and travelled pretty much everywhere in the Baltics, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as features editor of the English-language newspaper Baltic Times and later editor-in-chief of the Vilnius-based In Your Pocket city-guide series - which was where Lonely Planet found her and she found her German husband, Matthias Luefkens.Nicola has lived in France since 1996. She has worked for Lonely Planet for 10 years and authored numerous titles including Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania; Romania & Moldova; France; The Loire; Provence & the CUte d'Azur; Italy; Milan, Turin & Genoa; and Tuscany & Umbria. Few people live in her favourite places in the world: the sand-sculpted Curonian Spit (Lithuania), Trossochs (Scotland) and Kiribati (South Pacific). Her top travel tip (for work) - walk to the end of every street; (for pleasure) - eat well, eat local and don't forget the coffee.