Giles Edwards of La Tête, Cape Town

I love exploring new cities, foods and cultures, but always feel I need a holiday when I get back! There is a small camp in the Kruger Park called Balule, which I first went to when I was a year old. It is a very special place for me and I try to go there once a year. Only a small fence separates you from the wild. One of my favourite things is to pack the Landy full and head out. In Namibia I fell in love with the open road and the vast skies. I wasn’t expecting much from Turkey. We travelled south from Istanbul and the food varied dramatically and was surprising everywhere we went.

My most memorable holiday was in Cinque Terre on the Italian coast. We hired a tiny apartment on the cliffs and lived like locals: every day we ate white peaches, tomatoes and figs, and basked on the stone jetties with the kids. I had some of the best paella and charcuterie ever in Seville, Spain – at a Hemingway haunt. We were the only foreigners in the joint and everyone was off to the bullfight afterwards.

As a child, I remember eating moules marinière in a courtyard in Saint-Malo, France, with my grandfather, and thinking how absolutely fantastic it all was.

I spent a year on the Wild Coast, working at a backpackers in Coffee Bay. I’ll never forget that moment when I turned off the N2, heading for the ocean … I’d never seen such raw Africa.

• La Tête is a farm-to-fork, nose-to-tail eatery in Bree Street, Cape Town. 021-418-1299