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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: Travel Tips / Italy Travel / Rome Travel / Venice Travel / Florence Travel / Milan Travel / Sicily Travel / → All Tags

Indispensable Italy Tips: Beware Bread Baskets And Bare Shoulders

Italy's ancient sites are beautiful but not always handicapped-accessible.

If you're heading to Italy soon, we're totally jealous. We can't get enough of its wonderful cities: Bologna, Venice, Rome, Florence—we just want to move there already. Before you go, here are some tips we've gleaned during our own Italy travels:

· Beware of petty crimes. According to the U.S. Department of State, crimes such as pick-pocketing, theft from parked cars and purse snatching are serious problems, especially in large cities. Be on guard at crowded places like Milan's Central Station and the Trevi Fountain. And thieves in Italy often work in groups or pairs to divert your attention.

· Italy isn't handicapped-accessible. Italy's beauty lies in its ancient buildings, but most aren't equipped with wheelchair ramps and elevators. Buses aren't generally wheelchair-accessible, either.

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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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Tags: Venice Travel / Italy Travel / Women / Boats / → All Tags

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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Tags: Germs / TripAdvisor / Ireland / Venice Travel / → All Tags

Ireland Wins A Kiss For Germiest Attraction

Among the tourist attractions that make us go "ew", Ireland's Blarney Stone has always been high on the list—the thought of kissing the same piece of rock that all those strangers have kissed is kind of gross.The great news today is we're not the only OCD travelers around thinking this.

A new TripAdvisor list says that the Blarney Stone is #1 on the "Top 5 Germiest World Attractions" list. Not the kind of list you want to be at the top of, right?

After polling some 4,600 travelers, TripAdvisor also discovered that Seattle's Wall of Gum and Oscar Wilde's tomb in Paris are considered very germy too. At number four, St Mark's Square in Venice is a clear germ choice thanks to the pigeons. Rounding out the top five are the famous hand and footprints in Hollywood. Looks like wherever we travel we totally need our germ-busting nano scanner wand.

Related Stories:
· Germiest Vacation Spots [Boston Globe]
· Ireland's Blarney Stone Stuff-Up [Jaunted]
· Nano Scanner Wand Makes The World A Cleaner Place [Jaunted]

[Photo: bowbrick]

Tags: Celeb Travel / Brad Pitt / Super World Travelers / Angelina Jolie / Venice Travel / → All Tags

Water Taxi Travel: Brad On A Boat!

After what must have been an entire week of whining, Super World Traveler Brad Pitt takes sons Maddox and Pax on a water taxi ride in Venice, Italy during the Venice Film Festival. Dad Brad already won best actor for his performance in last year's "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford," so he had plenty of time to relax.

We may joke about how much Brangelina travels, but it is truly mind-boggling that they were able to do that and between them make three Oscar-caliber movies in the same year. (Brad's "Burn After Reading" opens Sept. 12 and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" Dec. 25; Angelina's "Changeling" opens Oct. 31.) Talk about super overachievement.

Related Stories:
· Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Children Have Nothing Against Carbs [Jaunted]
· No Way! Super World Travelers' Babies Look Like... Babies [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Socialite Life]