My holidays: Emily St John Mandel

Emily St John Mandel takes a photo of her room door every time she arrives at a new hotel. Photo / Supplied

The Canadian writer shares her travel tips and holiday highlights.

What was your greatest holiday?

My husband and I once spent a few days at the cryptically named Point No Point, which is a lovely and very unpretentious little resort on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. My grandparents used to go there in the 50s. It's just a collection of secluded small cabins in the woods, overlooking the ocean, and because it's on the west side of Vancouver Island, by "woods" I mean "spectacular temperate rainforest". The cabins have front decks with hot tubs, and the main office building has an excellent restaurant. We read and wrote and went for walks on the beach. It was perfect.

And the worst?

Food poisoning, San Francisco, 2007.

If we bump into you on holiday, what are you most likely to be doing?

Regrettably, you're unlikely to bump into me on holiday. Almost all of my travel these days is for book tours. But if you bump into me on tour, I'm very likely to be drinking tea and either working or reading in a cafe not far from a bookstore. Actually, if you were to bump into me on holiday, I'd probably be doing more or less the same thing.

If we could teleport you to one place for a week-long holiday, where would it be?

I would very much like to visit Iceland in the summertime.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done when travelling?

I stayed in one of those hotels where they still use actual keys, and forgot to return the key when I checked out. My trip was being paid for by a not-for-profit arts organisation and I was mortified by the thought that the hotel might charge them for it, so I had to pay the taxi driver who dropped me at the airport an extra $20 to take the key back to the hotel.

Complete this sentence, I can't travel without...

Alcohol-based hand sanitiser. I'm aware that this is probably an indicator of neuroticism, but in my defence, the stuff works: I'm forever going on tour with people who don't use hand sanitiser, and by the end of the tour they're ill and I'm not. Most of my book tours involve getting on an aeroplane every 24 hours and shaking hands with people all day.

What's the best travel tip you've ever been given?

Australian author Justine Larbalestier suggested taking a photo of your hotel room door every time you arrive at a new hotel, in case you forget the room number. Before I started taking pictures of hotel room doors, I once spent a demoralising half-hour wandering the corridors of a hotel in Cincinnati trying to remember which room was mine.

What's the best thing you've brought back from a trip?

A gorgeous British hardcover edition of Jeff VanderMeer's Area X trilogy.

Favourite airport at which to land?

I really like CDG (Paris) and YVR (Vancouver). I think the design of CDG is beautiful. I'm soothed by the clean lines and open space whenever I land there. Vancouver has beautiful First Nations art on display. There's a series of Inuit carvings that I like to visit every time I pass through.

Emily St John Mandel, whose latest book is Station Eleven, speaks as part of the Auckland Writers Festival on May 15. The festival runs from May 13-17.