🇬🇧 Edinburgh → 🇮🇹 Venice · 1 week

Do the 'bacaro crawl' through Cannaregio — start at Osteria Al Brindisi on Fondamenta della Misericordia and work east through a half-dozen hole-in-the-wall wine bars. Order 'ombra' (small glass of wine, €1-1.50) and 'cicchetti' (Venetian tapas, €1-2 each) at each stop. This is how Venetians actually eat and drink.

Take the No. 1 vaporetto at dawn (first departure around 5:30am) down the Grand Canal. The water bus travels the full length of the canal in 45 minutes — at sunrise, with almost no other tourists and the city just waking up, it's one of the great travel experiences in Europe. Costs €9.50 single or covered by a day pass.

Take the No. 12 vaporetto to Burano (45 min, €9.50 single) — the fishing island of pastel-coloured houses that exists separately from Venice's tourist machinery. Walk the perimeter of the island in 30 minutes, eat at a table outside on Piazza Galuppi, and take the lace-making seriously — the tradition is dying and the remaining practitioners are extraordinary.

Book a concert at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco — Baroque chamber music in a room covered floor-to-ceiling with Tintoretto paintings (the largest single collection of his work anywhere). Tickets around €25 and the combination of music and art in that gilded space is genuinely extraordinary.