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Tags: Prime-Plane-Spotting-Map / Plane Spotting / Alitalia / Venice Travel / Italy Travel / → All Tags

'Marco?' 'Polo!' Hop A Boat To Plane-Spot In Venice

If you know anything about Venice, you know that it is a city built on water, so it's quite fitting that the perfect location for plane spotting is onboard a boat. But not just any boat, we're talking about the water taxis between Venice's Marco Polo Airport and Venice proper. The airport sits on marsh land right on the coast, while the tourist-filled portion is out in the middle of the lagoon.

Going between the airport and the city of Venice therefore means taking either a private boat or the Alilaguna Waterbus right underneath the paths of arriving and departing flights. While you rock on the waves of other speeding water taxis passing by, you can look up at airplanes from carriers like Alitalia and other major carriers. Smaller LCC airlines like Jaunted personal favorite Germanwings sadly won't be found here, but at Treviso Airport.

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Tags: Film Festival Travel / Venice Film Festival / Celeb Travel / George Clooney / Michael Moore / Paris Hilton / → All Tags

Hugo Chavez and Paris Hilton Take Venice Film Fest By Storm

The big news at the 66th Annual Venice Film Festival—aside from George Clooney introducing his latest girlfriend to the world—has to do, as always, with movie debuts that tend to get film buffs riled up in their plush, reclining chairs. This year's festival drew names including Oliver Stone, Matt Damon, Michael Moore, and—oh, god—Paris Hilton to the celebration of international film.

Stone had one of the more memorable red carpet moments of the festival when he walked buddy-buddy style with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to the premiere of South of the Border, his film about the leader and stereotypes associated with him. As The Telegraph UK reports, the two were surrounded by a swarm of 50 bodyguards. Necessary, sure, but also in keeping with Stone's penchant for controversy.

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Tags: Celeb Travel / Film Festival Travel / Venice Film Festival / George Clooney / → All Tags

It's Clooney On A Boat! George Sings For His Superfans in Venice

Often overshadowed by its cousins in Toronto and Cannes, the Venice Film Festival isn't so much forgotten as snuck into most A-listers' schedules in a rush of press trips. But attendees at this year's Venetian outing got a treat yesterday: George Clooney, performing live! One night only!

Also, one song only: After technical problems hit a screening of his new movie "Men Who Stare At Goats," the world's favorite bachelor (despite bringing along his new girlfriend) serenaded the crowd with "O Sole Mio"—tune of stereotyped gondoliers everywhere. Who knew he could sing, besides everyone who saw "O Brother Where Art Thou"?

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Tags: Venice Film Festival / Venice Travel / Celeb Travel / Movie Travel / Events / Michael Moore / → All Tags

Michael Moore Floods Into Venice For The International Film Fest

Today in Venice, the city is full of prosecco glasses clinking and red carpets rolling out as the Venice International Film Festival begins—the world's oldest film festival—and this year brings another impressive roster of films battling for the Golden Lion prize.

Actually, come to think of it, SkyEurope had routes to Venice's Treviso airport; we sure hope no one is stranded elsewhere trying to get to Venice for the films, because they'll sure be missing out on some good stuff. For instance, Michael Moore is using the fest to premiere his newest: "Capitalism: A Love Story," about the US economic meltdown.

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Tags: Summer-Signature-Cocktails-Map / Drinking Travel / Italy Travel / Venice Travel / → All Tags

Where To Drink Jaunted's Favorite Spritz Cocktail In Venice

While the summer is at its peak and you're no doubt tired of chugging bottled water under the sun at tourist sites, we're going to hit some of the world's best watering holes and down their famous summer cocktails. Bottoms up!

As dusk hits the lagoon of La Serenissima, tourists retire to their hotels for naps or plain cooling down from hot days under the Adriatic sun, spent museum-hopping and souvenir shopping. This is the cocktail hour in Venice, when it feels as though the locals emerge after lying in wait for the tourists to tire. To celebrate the beginning of another evening of socializing and good food, the cocktail hour usually focuses around Venice's signature local drink: the Spritz.

Based on either Campari or Aperol—with Campari the typically male version and Aperol (order "Spritz al Aperol") for women—a Spritz is a happy little red-ochre potion which can be found year-round in Venetian bars. Nonetheless, summer turns us away from our usual Prosecco and towards the fresher comforts of a Spritz at the Ciak 1 bar in the San Polo district.

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After 900 Years, Venice's Canals Become Equal Opportunity Employer

It's a familiar site on the water street of Venice, the striped shirts and flat hats of the gondoliers swaying as they expertly steer their black boats underneath bridge after bridge, but now there'll be some long blonde hair joining the club.

After 900 years of the profession of Venetian gondolier belonging totally to men, La Serenissima has her first woman plying the waters: Giorgia Boscolo, a 23-year-old wife and mother of two, who also happens to be the daughter of a gondolier. She passed the gondolier test back in 2007, but had to endure an apprenticeship up until recently when she took the oar of her own boat.

In order to become a gondolier, no matter your sex, you must "learn how to steer the banana-shaped boats from the back and the front ... take English courses, study sailing law and demonstrate perfect knowledge of Venice's canals and landmarks." This isn't like scuba diving, which you can get certified in during a week-long vacation. What we now want to know is if she'll be operating some kind of reservations service, now that she's the freshest addition to Venice's canals in centuries.

Related Stories:
· Venice Hails First Woman Gondolier [Life In Italy]
· Tutti in godola, vi porta Giorgia [la Repubblica]
· Venice Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: La Repubblica]

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When In Venice, Don't Forget To Drink The Water

Nowhere is the saying "In Vino Veritas"—or "there is truth in wine"—more fitting than in Venice. If you aren't sweating buckets while lugging a giant camera around the dank city in the summer heat, then you're left to pondering the murky canals and their plague-ridden history. Best to order wine at dinner then, right?

Wrong. If there's one thing Italians love just as much as wine, it's their Acqua Minerale and Naturale, and since they are one of the top consumers of water in the world (at 40 gallons per person annually), it makes sense to give their own tap a hearty rebranding.

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Niche Dining On Venice Beach's Washington Blvd

Los Angeles is sprawling, hard to navigate, and - especially along the beaches - ostentatiously touristy. Los Angelenos are cynical, difficult to approach, and - especially along the beaches - ostentatiously anti-tourist. This creates a difficult situation both for visitors and for the local establishments that cater to them. Perhaps as a kind of survival mechanism, restaurants sometimes clump together in configurations very much resembling classic tourist traps.

One of those clumps lies at the end of Washington Blvd. Nearby residents insist that the street is in Venice. The expensive hotels that sit two blocks away are pretty sure it's part of Marina Del Rey. Either way the small street has dining choices from across the classiness spectrum, from the merely chichi to the very chichi to the... not. Many of those restaurants are actually quite good, popular with locals, and not at all trap-like.

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Tags: Selling Out Travel / Travel News / Venice / Coke / → All Tags

Venice Braces for Arrival of Coca-Cola Vending Machines

Notoriously awash with tourists, the Acqua Alta and Bellinis, Venice is about to add Coca-Cola to the mix as the city's official soft drink. Of course in a city that has a love-hate relationship with modernity, the multi-million dollar deal between Venice's mayor and Coke isn't going over very swimmingly.

According to the BBC, in an attempt to supplement the meager government funds earmarked for conservation, the city will receive $2.7 million from Coke for installing "sixty vending machines which will sell the drink all over the city, including at the main waterbus stations and reportedly even St Mark's Square, where a city ordinance already forbids picnicking by tourists."

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Anthony Bourdain Uncovers Non-Sucky Venice

Venice is among Europe's most visited cities, and for many travelers it's also one of the most disappointing, once they realize this ancient city-state is chock full of cruise ship passengers, overpriced tourist traps, $100 gondola rides and, as Anthony Bourdain so succinctly puts, beaches that attract "a who's who of international douche-dom."

On this week's "No Reservations," Bourdain is the latest traveler intent on finding that non-touristy, trapped-in-time Venice. You know, the one that doesn’t suck.

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Tags: A Horse Is a Horse / Art Galleries / Animals / → All Tags

Italian Art Lovers Have An Animal Attraction

We're all for getting a bit cultural on our travels but perhaps the latest exhibition planned for the Galleria d'arte Giudecca in Venice is taking art a gallop too far.

Turns out that this Italian gallery is planning a spring exhibition of the works of a new artist... who happens to be a horse. As you'd expect, these paintings seem to belong to the abstract genre and aren't exactly what we'd want on our wall, but apparently there are buyers out there. It gets better: The horse's owner reckons the animal could be a reincarnation of someone like Monet.

Come on. We thought art galleries are serious businesses, but these guys seem to be just, well, horsing around.

Related Stories:
· Cholla Gets Venice Exhibition [Telegraph]
· Venice Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Art Galleries coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Telegraph]

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Wakeboarding In Venice: New Attraction Or New Crime?

As we (unfortunately) promised, a second surge of floodwaters hit Venice yesterday, peaking at just over three feet. But with the windy weather now calming down, experts are predicting the flooding will subside and Venetians will soon have a chance to dry off a bit.

It doesn't sound like all the locals have been as upset by the flooding as they should be. One guy thought that a flooded St Mark's Square made a great venue for a bit of wakeboarding.

Of course, we know that the Venetian authorities are on a big campaign to ban anything that's fun, so we weren't surprised that the wakeboarder was quickly arrested by local police. Pity, perhaps Venice could have turned its flood woes into an adventure travel paradise.

Related Stories:
· High Tide Wallop Venice for 2nd Day [AP, via Google]
· Acqua Alta in Venice At Near Record Levels [Jaunted]
· More Rules for Venice Tourists [Jaunted]

[Photo: BBC]