The argument goes that you don't need an expert, that you should try to engage in an unmediated way with whatever is before you.

I'm not sure what made me change my mind, but a friend persuaded me to hire an audio guide for an exhibition of late Picasso at the Art Gallery of NSW, about 10 years ago. Terence Maloon, a former curator of the gallery, put it together and it was utterly brilliant, it was as if my own personal expert took me around the very comprehensive show, making it my own.

His detailed knowledge and enthusiasm for the material made my own experience entirely different. These days, I rarely go to a museum or an exhibition without hiring the strange little headsets – although, as with everything, some are better than others (years ago, I went to Tasmania's MONA Museum and those were the absolute best, strange but marvellous; and not always exactly about the work you were looking at).

I'm not sure what youthful smugness made me think I could interpret whatever was before me, but I'm glad it's disappeared. As I get older, I find I need more help and more guidance, not less.

And if there is one thing better than an audio guide, it's an actual real live person with expertise taking you on a trip. Take, for instance, Frances. She works at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. I watched her bring a complex exhibition of work by American artist Chuck Close, to life for two young Brazilian tourists.

She did such a good job that I found myself following her around; she made the works come to life, providing answers that drew on much more knowledge than what was before her. I visit there reasonably frequently and if I see her around, I know that she will have something more to tell me about what I see.

For so many years, as a young traveller, I would pretend I could do it all myself. I'd buy a guidebook and wander the streets. Now, as an older traveller, I try to find people like Frances all over the world. It's tricky because you can get sucked into spending a lot of money, but eventually you can tell who will be worth it, whether it's friends of friends, or on a travel review sites.

And sometimes they come in unexpected guises. It's not surprising that an archaeologist would do the best possible tours of Pompeii and Herculaneum, particularly since he'd completed his postgraduate studied at the scene of the devastating lava flows. However, I was surprised that Italy has so many tour guides with serious academic qualifications in their areas – when I asked a PhD why she was a guide at the Vatican Museum, she said had the choice of being poorly paid as a Renaissance art historian or well-paid explaining the work she loved to people like me.

For the past few weeks, I've followed all kinds of guides across Italy who've showed me more and taught me more than I could possible have done myself, no matter how good the guide book. They are not always locals but they've become locals – in particular, the young man who met and married a Florentine woman and abandoned his own speciality field of land management then studied for years to become an expert on Brunello wines, taking small groups around tiny wineries – while knowing enough about Australian wines to be able to put what I was tasting into context.

If I'd done it by myself, I would have ended up at one of the big commercial wineries and learned barely a thing about what I was tasting nor been able to have the conversations which introduced me to a part of Italy I hadn't even known existed.

I remember taking some German visitors around Sydney one year, to all my favourite places; dragging them along the Bondi to Bronte walk even though they were fresh off a 24-hour flight.

Years later they still said they loved their time in Sydney because they were shown around by someone who really loved the city. They loved it because I love it. That's what a good guide does. Pass on the love.

Twitter @jennaprice or email jennapricejournalist@gmail.com