Of all the places we visited in Italy, we were most unsure about Venice. With the gondolas, the serenading, the much-photographed pigeon squares, we worried that we knew too much about the city, that the endless onslaught of we tourists would have robbed the city of its natural charm. We

It is hard to know what to make of massive cemeteries with row after row of identical, machine-polished, brown headstones. Everything is so perfectly ordered: not so many people hanging about, not so many markers to distinguish one gravestone from another. We all have our traditions, but it is heartening to see