Maggie in Venice

ABOVE: In June, this dog (plus another dog, eight cats, and three tortoises) will welcome a housesitter in Ayvalik, Turkey.

In a new Europe for Visitors Blog post, we describe a great travel opportunity for pet lovers with time to spare: House-sitting in Europe with TrustedHouseSitters.com.

The concept is simple: You take care of a house or apartment (including pets and plants) while the homeowners are out of town. In return, you get a free place to stay for anywhere from a week or two to several months.

Opportunities range from London townhouses to French farmhouses to villas on the beach in Turkey and Greece. (Listings change all the time, and if you're open-minded about location, you can vacation for a good part of the year without ever paying for a place to stay--especially after you've established yourself as a reliable housesitter.)

We didn't find any Venice listings in our perusal of TrustedHouseSitters.com's most recent opportunities, but we did see an apartment in Umbria that came with a herd of alpacas on a nearby farm. 

For more information, see our Europe for Visitors blog post or visit the company's Web site at TrustedHouseSitters.com.

Photo: TrustedHouseSitters.com