Are holidays and travel important to you?

They are, but increasingly I realise that the best part is the anticipation. I want to be happier away from home than I am at home, so I've become a much more careful, choosier traveller. In the past, if someone invited me anywhere I would have said 'yeah, sure', but now I think: 'Do I really want to go to this place? Am I ready to see it?'

A little while ago some friends said: 'We're going to India, do you want to come along?' and I said: 'Frankly, I don't want to go to India.' That's not because I don't have an interest in the country, but it was because my interest was not mature enough. I don't want to wander around the place just for the sake of having been. I want to be absolutely desperate to go and really know what I want to see there.

I want to have nurtured a long-standing fascination with Indian temples or whatever so that when I see one I know exactly what I'm looking at. Otherwise one can feel like a satiated diner who is presented with ever more lovely dishes and is not really sure if they're hungry.

What kind of holidays do you enjoy?

I live in London so travelling is connected to nature and getting out and looking at a big landscape, a big sky and breathing clean air. That's one big draw. Another might be culture. Last summer I went on a trip to visit Corbusier's villas outside Paris because I'm writing a book about architecture and I wanted to see these places. The fact that there was something holding the whole trip together was rather helpful. I had very culturally aware parents who dragged me away to Paris and Rome and I think that gave me an abiding hatred of the cultural trip that sort of makes the heart sink. I do go on cultural trips now, but the phrase is a bit frightening. I try to resist the lure of guidebooks and their culture guilt by asking myself what am I really interested in?

Do you travel to escape or find yourself?

It depends. If I've been busy with a project I may want literally to escape myself and go away to really switch off. I went on a few holidays in the sun where I hoped that would happen but it doesn't really ever work. I think it's impossible to get away from yourself and the best thing to do is to sleep.

The whole point of travel is to be stimulated. It's an inherently stimulating business. If you want to switch off you should practise Zen meditation, not head to the beach.

Do you consider yourself to be a good traveller?

I am aware of the toll of travelling. Physically, I don't have trouble with travel but I recognise it for what it is: a big experience.

Just because trips to New York have become unbelievably cheap that doesn't make it easy. It's never going to be easy and that's why travel is valuable.

I think on the whole we tend to travel too much and make less of it. We don't notice the weirdness and appreciate the richness of it.

After a trip do you return re-energised or depressed to be home?

I used to feel that life was elsewhere and other places must be more exciting. I think that's a very dangerous kind of romantic nostalgia because I don't want to always feel that the place where I am most of the time is the depressing one and the place where I am for two weeks is the really exciting one. That just seems like a really bad way to organise your life.

I often return challenged: the world is broader and weirder and more exciting than I thought. You come back sort of humbled and realise that the experience I have in my particular world and my particular city is just a fraction of what is really going on out there.

Where is the next place you feel ready to visit?

Florence, because I've never been. I'd like to go in February when it's cold and more empty. By contrast, I feel fascinated by Latin America but I'm not sure I really want to go. If someone were to invite me to Bolivia this year I might think twice.

· The Art of Travel is on tonight at 8pm on Channel 4.