You'd be hard-pressed to find a bad pizza in Naples. Even the most hole-in-the-wall joints will fire up a crispy Margherita pie with just the right amount of cheese and a dollop of perfectly-seasoned, secret-recipe sauce.

We had our first real Neapolitan pizza at La Piazzetta, a neighborhood restaurant in a "little piazza" near the train station. We spent just $5 on it, which sure beats the $15 we spent on gelato.

If the food hadn't been so good, we might've noticed the overflowing trash bins near our table sooner. They had the potential to make a real stinker of our evening, but thanks to some strategically placed latticework, we were pleasantly distracted. Of course, we're still trying to figure out why the pizzeria was watering its fake ivy.

Related Stories:
· Pizza coverage [Jaunted]
· Italy Travel coverage [Jaunted]

Going old school with a runway show in Florence last week for her Resort 2009 Collection, the foundress of the wrap dress Diane von Furstenberg flashed the retro card with outfits based on her own hotel travels.

Entitled "La Petite Valise," the collection's focus on dressing for the destination comes through with primary Riviera stripes and zigzags, bathing beauty swimsuits that scream "lounging on the lido," and a dress with the pattern of DvF's own passport pages.

Even though the entire show referenced the days of the grand tour, Furstenberg deemed a portion of it "the Hotel Life," flashing outfits of Wedgwood blue and a hotel key pattern directly influenced by the style of The Claridge's Hotel

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.

At least he did on his latest trip into Rome. From our new favorite iPhone-carrying tipster:

Saturday. 8 am Rome time. At Fiumincino, Anthony Bourdain gets his and his family's luggage. The stars are just like us. Flew Continental from Newark, my flight, saw him on it.

Clearly Bourdain should be happy that checked bags are free on transatlantic flights. Maybe he's in town to check out the awesome eats?

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· Airport Photo Shoots coverage [Jaunted]
· Anthony Bourdain coverage [Jaunted]

Twice a year, the world's best dressed descend on New York, London, Milan and other world couture centers to check out what they can buy--and what we will pick up in knockoff form at H&M. But some rogue organizations are changing the game by assembling "pre-season" shows that give fashionistas an early peek at the fall collections.

Right now, designers like Diane Von Furstenberg, Tarina Tarantino and Yigal Azrouel have their wares on display at the Pitti W_Woman Precollection trade show in Florence.

Just like with spring training, pre-season allows die-hard fashion fans to get a jump on what their favorite designers are planning to unroll--and hey, if a trip to Italy is involved, that's just a bonus.

Related Stories:
· Pitti W_Woman Precollection [Official Site]
· Florence Cashes in on "Pre-Season Fashion Wave [AP, via Yahoo]
· Fashion Travel: YSL Exhibit Cheaper than Ready-to-Wear [Jaunted]

[Photo: charis8803]

Is Italy trying to compete with Austria for the next season of "Locked up Abroad," or is kidnapping family members a freaky new European pastime? Either way, the latest news out of Naples makes our skin crawl.

On Sunday it was revealed that a 47-year-old Italian woman, Maria Monaco, was held captive for 18 years in a filthy bedroom outside the southern city. As of late, filth and strange smells have become synonymous with Naples, but one neighbor reported an unusually strong stench near a room in the rural family home. That's where the carabinieri found the victim.

Monaco's relatives reportedly stashed her in the basement in 1990 after she became pregnant with an illegitimate son. Unsurprisingly, she's now being hospitalized for a psychiatric condition and her family, including the 80-year-old granny, are all under investigation.

Related Stories:
· Woman Freed After Being Locked up for 18 Years [AP, via Google]
· Crime coverage [Jaunted]
· Italy Travel coverage [Jaunted]

Hey, remember those awesome scenes in "The Da Vinci Code" where Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu went into a church and discovered "Jesus" could be her middle name? (It was something like that.) Well, hope you enjoyed those sweeping Ron Howard shots, because the Vatican is cracking down on filming requests for the Dan Brown prequel "Angels and Demons."

When the Catholic Church was unable to kill the best-selling thriller and the train of books that followed it, it struck back by blocking Tom Hanks and Howard from shooting inside two Rome churches, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria, which supposedly figure prominently into the plot of "Angels and Demons."

(We've never read it, but we assume it takes Langdon the symbologist from idyllic desert childhood to kill-happy atheist. It's a prequel, after all!)

Church cooperation or no, look for "Angels and Demons" to hit theaters sometime in 2009, with new costars Ewan McGregor as a Vatican hotshot and Ayelet Zurer ("Vantage Point," "Munich") as the requisite hot-lady scientist.

Related Stories:
· Movie Set Travel: "The Da Vinci Code" [Jaunted]
· Vatican Bans Tom Hanks from Filming in Churches [ICYDK]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Defamer]

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 you live in Manhattan, it is only natural to crave space. On weekends, residents flock to Central Park like it is Vermont. I’ve been in “huge” New York city stores that would fit in the remote corner of a Target parking lot. It’s reflexive – if humans really do want that which we can’t have, then forget happiness, I want square footage.

Which is why when I travel I typically prefer open-air settings over just another version of my own cramped hometown. So when my family and I decided to go to Italy, instead of a hotel near the Duomo in Florence or outside the Vatican in Rome, we chose to stay in rural Tuscany.

We rented a villa with nine bedrooms and five bathrooms (seven if you count the two in the one-bedroom pool house, which is bigger than my entire apartment), which cost us less than a three star hotel in a major city would cost. The villa was located outside the small town of Cetona, which boasted three restaurants, four gelato cafes and a host of other small shops that, taking riposo (the Italian “siesta”) into account, were open for about two hours a day. But if you managed to get to the food store a stock up on food and wine (which is hard because portions are about one-quarter the size of American portions), then holing yourself up in the house with a bottle of Chianti (or, at 3 euro per, a case) was the best you could hope for out of an Italian vacation.