MY FATHER was a film producer, so I spent much of my childhood hanging around film sets and hotels in terribly exotic places. But, in truth, one studio is much the same as another — I might as well have been in Pinewood as in Delhi.

I was 18 when I went on my first proper, parent-free holiday. It was only to a beach in the south of France, but it was enough to catch the travel bug. So the next trip was to South America for six months with a girlfriend.

In retrospect, I wonder what my parents were thinking of, but at the time it seemed quite a normal thing to do. My grandmother had been born in Argentina, and it had long been a place I had dreamt of seeing, though it was at the height of the Junta and there were policemen everywhere. So we didn’t stay long — we hitchhiked north through Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

One of my strongest memories is of going to Lake Titicaca, where we stayed on an island without electricity, which we reached by reed boat. I remember finally being grateful to my father for making me pack a dynamo torch. Another vivid memory was less rosy — of one of the most dis-gusting hotels I have ever been in, where I woke in the middle of the night to find a large Bolivian trying to get into my bed. I screamed my head off and he ran out. That was the only truly scary experience of the trip.

I spend a lot of time in Italy nowadays. My husband’s parents have a house in Tuscany, and we have been going there every year for a long time. Italy’s a good place to go with kids. Soon after we had our first child, we went out to dinner in Pisa. The waiter took the baby into the kitchen so my husband and I could chat. She didn’t come back for an hour. I suppose I should have been worried, but I was so relieved that I thought: “It’s Italy, she’ll be fine.” And she was.

My current big discovery is Lake Como. I had no idea it was such a beautiful spot. It was fantastically fashionable during the belle époque — and it still is, so you get a sense of what it was like in the past. And the swimming is wonderful: no salt and very few waves. Very relaxing.

We also went to stay in the Hamptons last year, which was hilarious. When the Americans build beach houses, they really build them — speakers in the bathroom, decks and barbecues outside, all beautifully appointed. It was a bit spooky going into East Hampton and seeing all these incredibly swanky shops by the sea. There’s a New York Upper East Side subculture there — they all go to the same place for their holidays, and want the same shops as well.

I nearly drowned in the Hamptons. It was like the Stevie Smith poem Not Waving but Drowning. I was swimming in quite a rough sea and I suddenly got turned over by a wave three or four times. I came up from the water waving for help, but my husband and a friend just waved back from the beach. Luckily, I heard a voice in my ear — “Are you in difficulties, ma’am?” — and it was a real lifeguard in orange Speedos, who put me back on my feet and swam off. I staggered up the beach, very distressed, and all they said was “Hi”. I had nearly drowned and they hadn’t even noticed. So the Stevie Smith poem is in my new anthology.

I find it hard to switch from being a really selfish business traveller — where you’ve got your book and your iPod, and you just hunker down — to becoming a family traveller, where every moment you’re wiping orange juice off someone. My husband is a frequent business traveller too, so when we’re in leisure-travel mode, we have trouble adjusting. There’s always that moment when, because there are four of us, three are allotted a row of seats and one has the seat across the aisle. There’s usually a fight between my husband and me over who gets that seat.

I find poetry is a wonderful resource to have when you’re travelling — with or without kids. I tend to get very panicky. I learn poems by heart, and it’s a calming process to say a poem to your-self. It helps you put yourself in another place and travel inside your head.

I’ve been told off about the amount of books I take on holiday, but I’ll always take a couple of poetry collections — they’re great to read in transit. When I’m travelling, it always stirs up feelings of “Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going?”, so it’s good to have poetry, because that’s what poets do — answer those questions and give shape to those feelings.

Daisy Goodwin talked to Clare Colvin