Dear friends, I have always feared the prospect of travelling to Venice, Italy, because of horror stories of tourist traps charging ridiculous amounts of money for average food and bad wines. So, to my great surprise, I had a fantastic experience there last week… possibly THE greatest experience so far in Italy. Valentino on the Lido island was fab for traditional, simple Italian with a wine list that blew me away…including beautiful, older Barolo’s….and at super cheap prices (for the wines we had) Dinner at Belmond Hotel Cipriani was excellent, easily exceeding their current 1* status… Do you have similar experiences with other places where you feared bad quality and ridiculous prices but where you had pleasant surprises?