“Ecco il Canal Grande!” Aunt Hortensia said in dramatic fashion, spreading out her arms as if she was on stage and had created the scene for my benefit. My Italian was limited to “please,” “thank you” and “good day,” but I understood that this was the Grand Canal. Only it didn’t look very grand. It was wide, to be sure, but the buildings on the other side were rather ordinary. And it looked dirty, too. The odour that greeted my nostrils was not particularly appetizing. It was a watery sort of smell with a hint of fish and decay. I didn’t have much of a chance to study my surroundings, however, as we were immediately besieged by porters. It was a little alarming to have men fighting over us in a strange language, snatching at our bags and trying to bundle us into a gondola, whether we wanted one or not. But as Aunt Hortensia confessed, we had no alternative. We could not have managed all that luggage on one of the water buses they call “vaporetti.” Of course, I was thrilled to be in a gondola, even though the gondolier was not a handsome young Italian who sang love songs, but rather a grim-faced man with a paunch.

As we came around a bend, the Grand Canal became incredibly grand. On either side of us were amazing palaces, marble coated, or in shades of rich pink with arched Moorish windows. They appeared to float on the water in a way that was quite surreal—I wanted to get out my sketchbook right away. It was lucky that I didn’t, as the amount of traffic on the canal made the boat rock alarmingly. The gondolier muttered what must have been Italian swear words.

We were moving along quite nicely for a boat rowed with one oar, but the canal seemed awfully long.

“Ecco il Ponte di Rialto,” Aunt Hortensia exclaimed, pointing at a bridge that crossed the canal ahead of us, rising up in a great arch, as if suspended by magic. It appeared to have some sort of building on it because a row of windows winked in the afternoon sunshine as we approached. I wondered if Aunt H. intended to speak in only that language from now on. If so, conversation was liable to be rather one-sided.

However, this fear was dispelled as she now produced her Baedeker and began to inform me about each building we passed: “On your left, the Palazzo Barzizza. Note the thirteenth-century facades. And that large building is the Palazzo Mocenigo, where Lord Byron once stayed . . .”

This continued until an overcrowded vaporetto pulled out from its jetty. Our boat rocked again, and she almost dropped the book into the murky depths.

Just as I began feeling a bit queasy, another bridge came into sight, this one a more flimsy iron footbridge that spanned the canal at a greater height. I expected Aunt H. to say, “Ecco Ponte something or other,” but instead she said, “Ah, the Accademia Bridge. Now we are almost at our destination. That’s good. I was beginning to feel rather seasick.”