Superstitious Italians believe that seeing a nun is bad luck. To combat any potential misfortune, they stick out the second and fifth digits of one hand and touch their genitals with the outstretched fingertips. This I tried on seeing a nun approach. No-one told me that Italian people do it with their hands in their […]

Venice is built on a swamp. Those ingenious Italians decided to ram wooden piles into the swamp, and construct ornate buildings on top of them. Unsurprisingly, some of them fell over after a thousand years of leaning. They’re doing cunning things now to stop the rest of the buildings collapsing too, but Venice still retains

Kosher meals – they have to be delivered to your seat on the plane still wrapped, so unless the head chef on your plane decides to microwave the whole lot – water, butter, cake and food, you’ll probably get a cold meal. Which means that you might get it delivered to your seat before everyone