My ideal break involves great food, good company and being in a beautiful place with a stash of books, a load of music and a guitar.

If I have a guitar with me, I’m on holiday.

Piano is work, but strumming the guitar is relaxation. For food, I love Italy and France; for beautiful scenery, the Danish coastline; and there is no greater company than Sophie.

We recently had a wonderful week in Paris, staying at Le Meurice, which is the most amazing hotel — 18th-century, utterly opulent. Just now, I love Paris.

There appears to be a curve to many people’s relationship with the city. It’s one of those places that, when you first go, you think is amazing. Then you visit again, have a few bad meals and everyone seems rude, and disillusion sets in. Then, gradually, you begin falling in love with it again. That’s where I am: I went off it a bit, but after this last trip with Sophie, I was enamoured again.

Sophie and I both love Norway. She has a lot of family connections with the country, but I first went when I was 21 and had a job playing on a Norwegian cruise ship. It was a small, bespoke cruise, with a library and lectures on Vikings. We sailed from Bergen right up to the Arctic Circle. It was summer, and I was captivated by the culture and the coastline, so dramatic and bathed in perpetual sunlight.

The most inspirational place I’ve been is New York. When I was 17, I spent all my summer-job savings on a £299 package holiday to the Big Apple with my best friend. Our plan was to go to as many jazz clubs as we possibly could. We went to the Village Vanguard and saw where Miles Davis had played, to Sweet Basil, which was home to the original jazz brunch, to the Zinc Bar, the 55 and a host of others. We heard some amazing music and met some amazing people. At the time, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do — writer, musician, international man of mystery? That trip nudged me towards musicianship.

I had another seminal trip not long after that, when I spent several months working my way up through France. I lived by playing piano in cafes and bars. I started in Marseilles and travelled up to Paris, getting work by finding places where there was music and hanging out until someone asked me to play.

I wound up in one particular village, not far from Montpellier, and was wandering around looking for somewhere to stay when I stumbled across a cafe where a band was playing. I went in, and within minutes they’d asked me to join them. By the end of the evening, I was staying with the family.

I’m lucky now that playing still takes me to new places. The obvious example is Australia: I’d written it off as a place where my schoolfriends spent their gap years, then I went to play the Byron Bay Blues and Roots festival and discovered an absolutely stunning country. I stayed on and spent a few weeks hanging out on Byron Bay’s incredible beaches before travelling to Sydney and Melbourne. I wasn’t expecting much of Melbourne, but I loved it — great cultural scene, amazing food and great nightlife.

I recently returned from a week in Bali, where I had the very hard job of playing at the opening of a resort, which was on a beautiful beach. Once I’d done the ceremony, I got to stay on for a week, and more or less had the place to myself. I spent the time eating, swimming and doing some pretty terrible surfing.

I wear contact lenses, but the waves wash them out, then when the good waves come, I can’t see them.

The two gaps in my travelling are, ironically, India and Burma. My grandfather was believed to be an Indian orphan and my grandmother was Burmese, but I haven’t been to either country. My mother left Burma when she was four, but still has clear memories of her house on stilts. It’s not that easy to go there at the moment, but I definitely will one day.

My next trip to plan is my honeymoon. I haven’t done anything about it yet, but it will be somewhere with beautiful scenery and great food, and I’ll be with my favourite travelling companion.

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