I am writing this, my first blog post, on a train from Paris to Milan, outside the sun is just setting, turning the white Alps amber, and in our compartment (which is a crazy mess of toys, bags, colours, flasks, buggy and cases), I have my 18-month-old son asleep on my lap and my 33-month-old daughter asleep on the seat opposite.

We are at the start of a slightly hairbrained scheme to review as many Italian hotels as possible for a boutique hotels website in a two-month time frame, and pick up as many other commissions as I can along the way. The wing-and-a-prayer part is that only the first five nights are booked up. Friends have said I’m crazy to even contemplate moving toddlers around from place to place every night or so, that they will be unsettled, that they will miss home, that I won’t get any work done. But I have to work, and it is inconceivable to me to leave them behind, and so this is an experiment. A venture into the unknown. I hope that in a month or so I will be able to tell you if it really was a crazy idea, or if they’ve had a ball.