Around the World|9 November 2015

Rent a car in Jesolo / Venice – a funny holiday!

Jesolo, near Venice, is a beautiful sea town to spend a great holiday, with a lot of fun and discos. It is a town close to Venice, great place to do sports and spend memorable time in amazing beaches: it is considered one of the best resort towns in Italy. There are a wide variety of outdoor activities, water adventures (see Aqualandia, for example), sights to see and arts and culture to absorb. Today we are talking about how to rent a car in Jesolo and what to see around this charming and funny italian area.

The Lido di Jesolo is a very tourist-catered area, with shops and eateries and hotels stretching about 10 miles of coastline. Jesolo city proper is about 2 miles inland, and is not considered a “sight to see.” Jesolo is for people intent on relaxing in the sand, with few plans or desire to be away from the beach and water. For many people, Jesolo is a day trip or a few days stint before branching out to other parts of Italy.

If you intend to fly into Jesolo, you should book a flight from the UK and land to the Venice Marco Polo Airport or Verona Catullo Airport or Treviso Airport Antonio Canova, taking the occasion to visit other Veneto’s fancy places, eventually. They are tiny Airports, but Venice Airport is close to the beaches of Jesolo. Jesolo itself is rather small and does not offer much transportation to and from the areas within it.

Your best bet to get to one end or the other is to use a taxi or have a rental car in Jesolo. If you have a rental car, you also have more options when it comes time to expand your horizons and see the rest of Italy. Jesolo is only about an hour from Venice (and the 2 casino’s in the area), and has easy access by water to Burano, Murano and Torcello. Given that most of Italy’s southern end is underwater, be prepared to drive inland before being able to access other ports.

If you rent a car and wish to visit various Italian isles, be prepared to pay exorbitantly for parking while you travel outwards. Most water transports do not ferry cars, so you will need to keep your car inland. However, if you just want a hire car and intend to travel inland, this can be a very affordable choice. You can travel through Venice before heading south towards Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo, or just straight west towards Verona, Milan, Turin and anywhere in between. Having a rental car allows you a flexibility to visit Jesolo but not be restricted to just Jesolo.

If you’re set on renting a car to transport you around Jesolo and the surrounding area, there are a few things to keep in mind. The roads are incredibly small and winding, pedestrians often walk in the streets and various car sizes mean that you must often stop and wait for others to pass before you can continue on.

Even talented coach drivers have to pay a little bit of attention navigating through Italy. For this reason, insurance is a issue for renters. Rental car companies provide a high daily rate for insurance coverage, but there are often so many loopholes that you will be fined exorbitantly if there is so much as a scratch on your car. To avoid this, get the best coverage you can and report any damage to your car to the authorities for the rental company’s records.

The other thing to be aware of when renting a car in Italy is that credit card companies do not offer additional coverage. Most international credit cards offer some traveler’s insurance and extended coverage for rental cars. There is absolutely no coverage for Italy, which should tell you as much as you need to know about the odds you’ll have an accident.

Once you’ve accepted this, it’s recommended that you book a rental car prior to arriving in Jesolo.

This way, you won’t experience the “tourist tax,” where companies attempt to take advantage of non-native speakers. Make sure you understand where to pick up the car (one of the best place to pick up cars in this area is at Venice Aiport or Treviso Airport), and pick a car that is a smaller size. Italian roads are notoriously small, and you may have less likelihood of crashing if you can squeeze through narrow alleys. For this reason, please pack lightly. You can’t strap a suitcase on the top of a compact car. In addition, make sure you book a car with automatic transmission unless you’re very adept with a stick shift. If at all possible, also pickup the rental car somewhere besides the Airport. Often, this convenient pickup is more expensive, and you can save quite a bit of money if you just take a bus to the next closest rental car location.

There are also tour buses, boats and metro systems that can take you where you want to go, but the public transportation system isn’t so well organized and efficient in Italy. Also, you sacrifice a little freedom to take these methods of transportation.