The latest in our string of culturally enriching "learning holiday" vacation ideas: a course in making mosaics in Venice.

This sounds like the ultimate geeky-but-cool week in Italy. Studios like Orsoni will give you hammers and bits of glass and some instructions on what to do with them, and let you take your grand creations home with you after your week-long learning experience.

Since wandering around Venice now seems to have so many rules, we reckon holing up in a mosaic workshop is a good way to escape tourist-ville. Being creative is still allowed (so far).

Related Stories:
· Taking a Mosaic Course in Venice [UK Times]
· Bologna's Make-Your-Own-Dinner Vacation [Jaunted]
· More Rules for Venice Tourists [Jaunted]

[Photo: ParaScubaSailor]

Anne Hathaway poses for photos before the opening of her new movie, "Rachel Getting Married," at the Venice Film Festival. She stars in the Jonathan Demme-directed indie as a wild child reunited with her family for the wedding of her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt).

Hathaway has been stowed out of sight as more information comes out about her ex-boyfriend Rafael Follieri's cons. The latest revelation is that she, not knowing how much trouble he was in, paid his $37,000 rent for four months. Next time, use HotelChatter to find a hotel!

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· Dangerous Travel: Agent 99 Attacked Off-Duty In Russia [Jaunted]
· Anne Hathaway Deals with Breakup At The Gramercy Park Hotel [HC]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: cele|bitchy]

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]

When you've spent all summer in a wardrobe of bathing trunks, a tux can feel like a straightjacket. George Clooney may have put on his fall uniform to attend a gala at the Venice Film Festival, but he'd clearly rather be on his boat.

He'll have to don the monkey suit again tomorrow for the world premiere of his new film, the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading." He doesn't have a film lined up for the fall though, just some voice work for the children's film "The Fantastic Mister Fox," so maybe he'll be back in vacation mode next week.

Related Stories:
· Hideout Travel: George Clooney Doing Just Fine In Italy [Jaunted]
· In The Dark Travel: Five Must-Sees at the 2008 Venice Film Festival [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Faded Youth Blog]

Get gorgeous and get ready for the red carpet this fall and head to the 65th Venice International Film Festival, which kicks off August 27 at the Venice Lido with Joel and Ethan Coen's "Burn After Reading."

Other festival highlights include Corto Cortissimo (an international competition of short films) and "These Phantoms: Italian Cinema Rediscovered," as well as screenings of films from India ("Zero Bridge") to Russia ("Paper Soldier"). Oh, and there will be stars--lots of stars--like George Clooney, Anne Hathaway and Frances McDormand.

Tickets for the public must be purchased in person at the Casinò, the PalaBiennale on the Venice Lido or the Palazzo Querini Dubois; they range in price from $16 to well over $400 for day passes and preferred seating. Follow the photogs!

Related Stories:
· Venice International Film Festival [Official Site]
· Datebook: Venice [NYT]
· Five Must-Sees at the 2008 Venice Film Festival [Jaunted]

[Photo: flo]

The Venice Film Festival, held August 27 through September 4, just announced its slate of films, and we're so excited. It may not have the cachet of Cannes, but at least there aren't any jellyfish on its shores. Here's what's on our ticket list:

• 5. "The Wrestler" One of only five American films in competition this year, this is Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to the controversial "The Fountain" starring Mickey Rourke and Evan Rachel Wood.


• 4. "The Burning Plain" Now that Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga, the director and screenwriter of "21 Grams" and "Babel," have ended their partnership, we're looking forward to seeing what Arriaga might have up his sleeve with this drama about a woman (Charlize Theron) trying to reunite with her estranged mother (Kim Basinger), a casting that could either go really right or super wrong.

Introducing our first submission for a Paula Abdul Hotel.

Earlier this month we wrote about how the Hotel Cipriani in Venice was undergoing an 50th "anniversary facelift", but too bad the Wall Street Journal's Finicky Traveler got there before the new look was completed.

Our fave hotel critic Laura Landro spent a few nights there and the opening of her review says it all:

Our suite at Venice's legendary Hotel Cipriani has stained mauve carpet, ratty faux-bamboo furniture and a platform bed looking into a whirlpool tub-for-two that seems not to have been scrubbed out since the 1970s. We feel positively transported -- to a honeymoon motel in the Poconos.

We have to sing "Happy Birthday" to the Hotel Cipriani in Venice this year, because they're celebrating their 50th anniversary. And to celebrate they're in the middle of a three-year renovation (pity it wasn't finished for the birthday, but still).

So far they say they're nearly done with the first phase, which has involved refurbishing ten rooms and suites in the Redentore and San Giorgio wings of the hotel. They've pulled out all the stops to make these made-over rooms fancy: cashmere and silk blankets, Murano glass, Fortuny and Rubelli fabrics and some genuine Venetian artwork.

Forget an oversized pillow or a lucky horseshoe--when actress Sienna Miller travels far and wide for movie roles, she always takes with her a pair of men's pajamas. Not just any pajamas, though. Sienna's sleepwear was a gift from late actor Heath Ledger from back when they were shooting the period romance "Casanova."

Miller and Ledger, who play unlikely lovers in the film, were caught out in a rainstorm and had to rush back to his apartment, where he lent Sienna the dry clothes from under his pillow. She later passed them back to him when he couldn't sleep. Ledger's dad returned them to her after his death in January.

We all have that luxury item we won't leave home without; what's yours? Don't laugh; we swear by our silly eyeshade for catching some z's in a light hotel room or on a daytime flight.

Related Stories:
· Sienna Miller Remembers Heath Ledger--with Pajamas [People]
· Remembering Heath Ledger [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo from "Casanova": movies.aol.com]

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie is not what you'll be singing, our mother warned us. "The gondolas in Venice are dirty and unromantic!" But the New York Times offers a sporting alternative: kayaking Venice, where you're your own gondolier.

Motorized boating for nonresidents is technically illegal, but as far as writer David Kocieniewski could tell, people-powered skiffs are free to cruise the canals even with a foreign tourist at the helm. (Given all the rules in Venice, we're sort of amazed.)

Sure, you have to check an inflatable boat (or rent one there) and spend a few days practicing on back canals, but exploring the city by kayak gives you a resident's glimpse of Venice. And after the gondolas are moored for the night, the waterways are all yours.

Related Stories:
· On Venice's Grand Canal in a Kayak [NYT]
· It's the Summer of the Kayak [Jaunted]
· Get Your Row on in Venice [Jaunted]
· Free and Fun in NYC: Kayak the Hudson [Jaunted]

[Photo: jehr]