I am a vampire. I love the night. Maybe it comes from being a jazz musician, but wherever I am in the world, I like to sleep by day, then go out late and find a neighbourhood brasserie where I can have drinks, eat moules-frites and hold court with friends, sharing scurrilous stories.

Ideally, it’ll be in Europe — somewhere like the Scheltema, in Brussels, which is perfect, really casual and full of laughter, the way Balthazar, in New York, tries so hard to be. And the more wine I have, the better my French becomes.

I’m not unpartial to a Michelin-starred restaurant, if it’s got atmosphere, and Copenhagen is my favourite for that: did you know it has 13 of them? At one we visited, they brought whole quail’s eggs to the table, and Elvis and I spent the next half-hour laughing, thinking: “How do you peel these? Should we just pop them in whole?” It felt a little too decadent, like the Mr Creosote moment in Monty Python.

My greatest travel discovery is Brazil, and it’s the music that first got me. I went to play in Rio and I was knocked out by the way the sounds of bossa nova are everywhere — in the streets, on the beach, tumbling out of every sidewalk cafe. It starts in the airport, where they’ve got whole racks of CDs of this exuberant music. I even bought one of football crowds belting out bossa nova standards at matches. So, at my concert, I did Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Este seu olhar, and the audience sang along unprompted — a joyous choir.

My hols: Michael Caine

The actor has been a bum in Paris, a callow youth in Cannes and a superstar in St Paul de Vence. Not a lot of people know that

My Hols: Anastacia

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• Frequent flyer: Erin O'Connor

BACKGROUND

• My hols: Phil Daniels

• My hols: Roger Moore

• My hols: David Mitchell

• My hols: Tracey Emin

• My hols: Colin Firth

BACKGROUND

• My hols: Ricky Gervais

• My hols: Sam Robards

• My hols: Jimmy Carr

• My hols: Johnny Vegas

• My hols: Moby

I’ve since been back for vacations, and I have so many great memories. Dancing on the piano in a bar in Sao Paulo the night Obama won the presidency; and an impromptu jam session on the rooftop at the Fasano, in Rio, the hippest hotel ever, with people playing drums on cocktail trays. I also really enjoyed Brasilia. It was the first space-age city, very futuristic in a 1950s way. It feels like being in The Jetsons.

Bizarre as it sounds, Rio reminds me of childhood holidays in Canada. Something to do with those vast hunks of rock jutting out of the ocean. My mother died seven years ago, and it reconnected me with home. Now Elvis and I have a cabin in the middle of nowhere on Vancouver Island, where we can take family holidays and decompress — walk in the woods and just stare at the amazing scenery. It’s still the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

People think you have to go to Whistler for skiing, but I like Cypress Mountain, just 20 minutes outside Vancouver. And I collect Haida art, the carvings and jewellery of British Columbia’s First Nations people, so I love rooting around the Museum of Anthropology and the galleries on Granville Street.

These days, I try to take my children on my travels. Juggling babies on the plane, drool everywhere — it’s great! It helps me turn my tours into holidays.

In Vienna, I wanted to take the twins to St Stephen’s Cathedral, so we gave my manager the slip and escaped into the city.

I do love European cities, especially in Scandinavia. I lived there for three months when I was 24, playing in piano bars in Stockholm, Oslo, even Stavanger. I like winter there: the crispness, the candlelight and the general Nordic stylishness of it all.

Stockholm has a groovy hotel, Rival, owned by Benny Andersson from Abba, with its own indie cinema. I tend to haunt the antiques stores in the Ostermalm district, and invariably end up buying some inappropriate piece of teak. My worst-ever souvenir choice was a piano I bought there, which then cost three times as much to ship home.

Scandinavia has that lure of the darkness again, as does Antarctica, which was my dream vacation — touring Patagonia, then out on an expedition boat from Ushuaia. It was magical, beautiful and traumatic, especially when a hurricane hit. I came out of my cabin one morning to see passengers climbing sideways up the deck. That’s when I knew it was time to be scared. It was unforgettable, but raw. Don’t expect luxury. You’ll have to pack your own quail’s eggs and champagne.

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