Financial Times, 12/13 November 2005
 Travel Super-Agents
A Rare Peek behind the Tourist Façade
Package-tour overkill had spoiled Venice for Rahul Jacob – but then he was able to visit some of its secret attractions
“By happy coincidence, I was in Venice at the same time as Emily FitzRoy, founder of the small firm Bellini Travel, which specialises in Italy – on and off the beaten track.”
“The thirtysomething FitzRoy quickly set about creating an itinerary designed to change my mind about the city. Among the things she arranged were private garden tours – “Gardens in Venice?” I remember thinking when I looked at her email – and a blue-collar wine bar crawl, er sprint, with the city’s entertaining one-woman equivalent of a Zagat guide, Michela Scibilia. I also booked myself rowing lessons on the lagoon before I got to Venice.”
“Next up was my tour of Venetian gardens, with Franca Zanchi as our guide and FitzRoy. We started in front of the most unprepossessing of unprepossessing exteriors. It turned out to be an old people’s home run by a Dominican order of nuns. Zanchi rang the bell and we were let in, only to discover a small garden at the back. Venetian gardens in the old days, she said, had no trees but arches of vines and roses. They were hidden away in the tradition of the Middle East.”
“The morning’s offering was a tour of three private palazzi. Palazzi tends to be nearly as overused a word as “prego” in Italy but the three on this tour were the real thing. The first was a 6,000 sq metre property being renovated at great cost by the energetic Bianca Arrivabene, whose husband inherited it. Sitting rooms felt as large as ballrooms; in one of these a Murano chandelier is perhaps the largest I’ve ever seen.”
“Our last stop is for another coffee at the palazzo of yet another of those larger than life Venetian women, Marie Bagnasco. Apologetic because she had just been in the hospital and was not her usual self, the 60 something music lover bustled about with more energy than people half her age.”
“As I pondered this whirwind of activity and wondered whether some women are simply exempt from growing old, I realised I too had fallen in love with Venice.”
Back to press articles >>
|
