This is what the famous musician Yehudi Menuhin writes about himself.

§ 1. Being a touring musician is a bit like being a sailor. It's constant motion, a continuous routine of settling into new hotels and meeting new people. So my ideal holiday is enjoying being alone with my wife.

§ 2. My earliest memory of a holiday was when I was five. We had just bought our first car, and drove joyously from San Francisco, exploring the most beautiful parts of California. It was a wonderful experience. I vividly remember the beautiful Yosemite valley, a place of waterfalls and beautiful mountains, a wilderness before we polluted it with cars and noisy stereo systems. As a child I collected photographs of those huge railway engines that pulled hundreds of goods wagons across America. These trains were like monsters, with groups of four wheels on each side. For Americans trains are hugely romantic. My first train journey across America was when I was eight years old. During the day I sat at the window watching the scenery fly past. At night I always had the top bunk bed in the sleeping compartment. I would scramble up to read in bed, feeling cosy and contented as the train rhythmically travelled over the rails through the night.

§ 3. Since then I've worked and studied for many hours on trains, enjoying the view and the sense of timelessness. I loved the smell of steel upon steel mixed up with the smell of the countryside. I loved the sound of the engine's horn, which used to remind me of the ferries which crept along in between the ships in San Francisco Bay on foggy nights. I have been lucky travelling all over the world and managing, just occasionally, to take a few days actually to see something more than just the airport, hotel and concert hall. When my wife and I were in Peru, we took three days off and flew in a small plane to the mountains where we spent a wonderful time walking and exploring in the jungle.

§ 4. Forty years ago we bought a small house on a Greek island and went there whenever we could. Initially there were just a few carts, and everything was transported on the back of a donkey or a man. We had a tiny cottage with a lovely garden of fruit trees where we used to pick grapes and oranges. We spent a lot of time on the beach  — as I love swimming  — and in the village getting to know people. After ten or fifteen years we were firmly involved in the community, able to share a totally different world, different language, different music.