Carnivale Weekend

Pictures from Carnivale, once again, due to uploading nonsense, a bit out of order. Blog is below!

Ciao everyone! It was Carnivale here in Italy (like Mardi Gras in the states) and I celebrated this weekend! Saturday night, Accademia Italiana threw a Carnivale party at a club that I did some elaborate makeup for. My roommate Emma and I went and had a blast, and got home too late for how early we had to get up Sunday.

Sunday, we met at the train station at 7:30am to meet up with Florence for Fun (a travel agency in Florence who puts together trips for students) and I slept through a three hour bus ride. We got to Venice around 11:30am and hopped on a big 'ole boat that took us down the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco, basically Carnivale headquarters. Venice really does look like it does in the movies. We had a beautiful day, sunny and 50, and we first sat at an outside cafe and ate lunch (ravioli) and people watched. The costumes were insane! Carnivale is basically like Halloween. Anything goes. I saw everything from the teenage mutant ninja turtles, smurfs, hannibal lector, knights, polar bears, etc.! Many people just dressed up and walked around and let us tourists and photographers take pictures of them. There were masks on most of the other people and were sold everywhere. Talk about a tough decision. I waited til Venice to buy mine, and I found one that "spoke to me" after the umpteenth booth I looked at. Only cost my €12 and I hope it makes it home! I got tons of compliments and many people that came with the group told me mine was their favorite. Flattering huh? 

So basically we just walked around and looked at everything and took tons of pictures of the costumed people. I'm not even going to tell you how many pictures I took. It wasn't completely what was expected, like in the states with all the drunkenness and booze and food everywhere. It was much more based on the costumes and confetti and there weren't many "convenient" ways to buy alcohol. So I did this all soberly...hmm. Anyways,  I think it was mostly because I was there during the day, and maybe because it was Sunday? I'm just assuming that it became a totally different party after dark. We saw a little of the costume contest in the square and also walked around and looked at a few shops and walked across some water "streets" (rivers) that run through the city and watch gondolas. Pretty surreal. 

I bought my ring(s) from Venice. I don't know if I've really talked about this, but I started a thing where I'm getting ring(s) in each big town that I visit. So far I've gotten an iron and gem ring in Barcelona, metal/wire rings from Rome, and in Venice I got glass rings since they're known for their blown glass. I will put up another album about my rings once I get some pictures taken of them and I'll explain them more then.

So anyways, I wish that we would've had a lot more time in Venice. We only had about 3 1/2 hours at Carnivale and didn't get far from San Marco. Again this is probably why I did drink (hard to carry a drink and take pictures!!). Darn. I'm excited that Mom and Dad and I plan to go back so I can see a lot more of the city. We had to meet at 5:30 and get back on a boat to go up the Grand Canal and then back on a bus. Woohoo for another long busride home. I was excited to see my pictures when I got home tho, makes it definitely worth it. So check them out!

(Again, the Carnivale Venetian style ones are the condensed versions, and the other four are not so condensed) Way cool experience.