VENICE, EASTER, 1958

Foreign visits seem to be accepted now as part of the school routine. Bruges and Brussels, 1956; Interlaken, Lugano and Venice, 1957; Venice again, Easter, 1958, the skiing trip to Grindelwald definitely booked for the next Christmas holidays. The concessions given to school parties are so considerable that the cost of a holiday abroad is reduced to a minimum. Those of us who have taken parties recently are delighted that so many are able to take advantage of these schemes. The holidays so far organised have proved to be both enjoyable and instructive; the parties themselves have compared favourably with groups, which we encountered from other schools, some of which were a poor advertisement on the Continent for British education.

This year the party was a mixed one, thirty boys and girls led by Mrs. Williams, Mr. Carswell and Mr. Fudge. The journey to Venice was largely uneventful. Compared with the girls' visit last year, when their journey coincided with a French rail strike, it must have seemed almost luxurious. Nevertheless by Tuesday afternoon, our second day of travelling, we were all feeling tired and were in no way grateful to the Italian railways for shunting our party in half on Milan Station.

Venice, when we at last arrived, could not have appeared less attractive. The wind was bitingly cold as we sailed up the Grand Canal on a tightly packed water bus; the boys and girls were in different establishments, separated by several canals, not the most convenient arrangement. Both turned out to be satisfactory though both had their peculiarities: the girls found the Convent heating system curiously erratic; the boys, on the other hand, could find no heating system at all. They had the advantage, however, of eating in a "civilian" restaurant every day where our tastes and capacity for Italian food steadily improved during the visit.

The sun shone for the first two days of the tour when we sailed up the Grand Canal in gondolas and toured some of the principal buildings of the city. Then the rain began. For four days it seemed to be continuous. Even the nuns felt the situation sufficiently serious and morale sufficiently low to warrant the production of a record player and some rock 'n' roll records. Ultimately we braved the weather and toured the city, regardless of the rain.

Our impressions and recollections of Venice are innumerable. The bargain hunting in the Rialto market; churches and coffee stalls; lace schools and glass factories; wine and macaroni; the singing in St. Mark's Cathedral; pigeons in the square; shop windows; Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese; the clock tower; the water bus; the Maritime Museum; the absence of cars and bicycles; narrow streets swarming instead with Italians and umbrellas; church bells at 7 a.m.

The holiday soon passed and before long we found ourselves back on the streamlined Venice station, dining that evening in the St. Gothard tunnel, breakfasting the following morning on the French train, lunching on the steamer, crossing by coach from Victoria to Waterloo, arriving in Exmouth later that evening, staggering into School at 9 a.m. the following morning. We had enjoyed ten full days and had enjoyed Venice. Many of us look forward to visiting the city again, provided we have the traditional Italian sunshine.