Geoffrey Palmer believes that "if you can't fall in love with Venice, you're never going to fall in love".

I first visited Venice many years ago – in 1949, to be precise. Someone had managed to scrounge their old man's car, and off a few of us went – leaving a friend and me in Venice. After a few days we hitchhiked home, which was quite arduous back then because there weren't many cars on the road.