Edward Hemingway, 38, is the grandson of Ernest Hemingway; his father was Gregory, ‘Papa’s’ youngest son. He is an illustrator and writer: his work has appeared in GQ and The New York Times, and his children’s book is due out from Penguin next year. He is the co-author of Hemingway & Bailey’s Bartending Guide to Great American Writers (Algonquin Books £10.99). Single, he lives in New York

‘I’VE NEVER had a bad vacation. I think vacations are like pizza. Even when it’s not quite what you expected, it’s still a pizza and it’s hard to get a pizza completely wrong. There’s always something to take from it.

Most of my vacations these days are taken within the United States. The thing is, I like really wild, open spaces and I love the excitement of cities, and you can get a fix of both here.

I’m off to Utah soon, for the biking. Utah is absolutely wonderful for mountain-biking. In Moab you have trails for every ability, but the one everyone comes for is the Slickrock Trail, slickrock being sandstone, which is really fast and exciting to ride. Fantastic desert and mountain scenery, too.

The name Hemingway does get me noticed. My cousin Helen Hemingway, who is a writer, says it opens a lot of doors, but it doesn’t prevent them being slammed in your face if people don’t like what they see when you step through.

I’m interested in my grandfather and his life, it’s hard not to be. I really like his old house in Key West. I know it’s a tourist trap, but it’s a beautiful property and there’s still a resonance for me. I just wish I could have seen Key West back in his day, before all the T-shirt shops and Hemingway-lookalike contests.

Everywhere changes, I suppose. Up until I was about 18, we used to go down to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. It was a remote, unspoilt spot back then. You went for fishing or whale-watching or empty beaches. Then it got colonised by upscale resorts such as Las Ventanas, and the spring-breakers discovered it, so at times it’s a madhouse, full of drunken college students.

The other place I love is also changing.

That’s Montana, where I was brought up until I was 12, when I was sent away to a boarding school on Rhode Island run by Benedictine monks. But that’s another story. Montana is the closest to the Wild West you can still get, a huge, exhilarating landscape with big skies and real cowboys.

Of course, a lot of writers have moved in now, people such as Thomas McGuane and James Lee Burke, and celebrities have bought summer houses around Livingston. Money has altered some parts of the state. But you have to remember that for eight months of the year, it’s covered in snow. Great skiing, but too cold for celebrities: you have to be tough to sit out the winters. It isn’t going to become a big spring-break destination, either. Too hard to get to, and too chilly to take your top off.

I have just illustrated a book on bars and great American writers with Mark Bailey, which involved a certain amount of drinking in classic saloons. Okay, a lot of drinking. So we hung out at places like the Algonquin and the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas died. We couldn’t put him in because he wasn’t American, but Jack Kerouac drank there and there used to be a piece of graffiti in the toilet that said “Kerouac Go Home”. Whether that was because he was annoying when drunk, I don’t know. Maybe his fellow drinkers were jealous. But it’s a shame they painted it out.

Because of the book, I get asked a lot for my favourite bar in the world, and I fall back on La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, where my grandfather drank. So did Brigitte Bardot, Nat King Cole and Errol Flynn. The attraction is that it’s still a quintessential dive bar, even though it is now world famous. And the walls are covered with scribbles and writings, some of them by my grandfather – napkins he scribbled on and so forth. It’s where I had my first mojito, back in, I think, 1990 – well before the current craze for cocktails caught on. I was blown away by it. Now you can get mojitos all over the world, but I would suggest they taste better in Cuba.

My writing partner, Mark, also has a favourite bar, but his is here in New York City. It’s the 21 Club, which is an old speakeasy. It’s changed a lot over the years, but going there for a drink is still an event, something special. And, for me, that’s what travelling is all about; those special places you’ve always wanted to visit. A night at the 21 or the Bodeguita might still be pizza, but it’s gourmet pizza.’

Edward Hemingway talked to Rob Ryan