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Sunday 7 September 2008

Guiding Lights

Charlotte Metcalf goes on a glorious tour of Venice

Summer is here (well, just) and with it a national sprouting of good intentions, as people dust off the dreary remnants of winter and a long, damp spring and start shaping up for the hot weather. People are heading for the gym and the spa, but I have recently returned from Venice where I enjoyed a very different but equally effective kind of boost.

I went on John Hall’s ‘Insider’s Venice’ course, a semi-private tour for people who want to enjoy Venice but who can’t face trudging round the Doge’s Palace or squeeze through the Bridge of Sighs with heaving hordes of package tourists.

The 15 of us on the course comprised nine Brits, including a lone Duchess, a pair of Russian women, a couple from Sweden and an American widow. Hall has been operating in Venice since the Sixties and knows just how to extract the best from the city, like the day a private boat took us to the smaller islands. We began on Murano at Santi Maria e Donato, the Byzantine church so admired by Ruskin, continued to Torcello and its cathedral and finished at Burano, where we lunched in an old lace factory. Thanks to the boat, there was no stress from checking the times of vaporettos or worrying about being stranded.

Our guide throughout was Dr Bruna Caruso, a tiny but robust grandmother of indefatigable energy and charm. Bruna’s knowledge of Venice is breathtaking, her infectious enthusiasm for her beloved city more so. Even after the third chilly, dank church of the morning, none of us dared confess to culture fatigue in the presence of such persuasive passion. One morning, Bruna took us to Venice’s opera house, La Fenice (The Phoenix). In 1996 it burnt down, but it has, fittingly for its name, risen from the ashes and been restored to its original magnificence, right down to every gilt cherub and the exact dusty rose plush of its chairs. I watched another group of Brits being dragged around by a guide who looked bored and irritable and was indicating, not very politely, that her charges should hurry up. How lucky we were to have Bruna, at that moment cajoling us into the Royal Box to regale us with yet another compelling anecdote.

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