Italy,
slowly.

Beatrice in Rome had us at a courtyard hotel five minutes from the Pantheon that she had used for her own family. Day three she took us into the Vatican before opening hours. A private hour in the Sistine Chapel with one curator and the lights barely on. Amalfi for four nights from a lemon-grove villa in Ravello; the studio had arranged a private boat down the coast to Positano with a Capri lunch on the way. Best holiday of our lives.

We had asked for a slow trip and Tibro built one. Five nights from a converted monastery in the Val d'Orcia, a cookery class with the owner's mother, a wine afternoon at a vineyard the studio had been sending people to for fifteen years. Then a slow handover north to Como. Driver-arranged, lake-view room, a private boat morning around the Borromean Islands. We came home rested in a way no other holiday has rested us.

Five nights of Italy followed by five in the Bernese Oberland. Milan was the place we were dreading. A transit city, we thought. And the studio had us at a private hour in the Last Supper room and a dinner at a Brera restaurant we could not have got into ourselves. The handover at Milano Centrale to the Glacier Express was clockwork. Tibro thinks about the in-between days; nobody else has done that for us.