Blue Skies & Venice Carnival

We awoke at 6 am to Blue Skies and we were so excited because we were headed to the Venice Carnival in Venice. We met Fun For Florence (the tour group) at the train station which is a five minute walk from our apartment (seriously the only thing that our apartment is close to!) We finally boarded the buses after a very long wait and headed to Venice (far northeast of Florence). The bus ride was only supposed to take about 3 hours but ended up taking like 4 because of some construction. I started to doze off when Emily awoke me to check out the views. We were driving through the mountains.. The views were unbelievable and we even saw some mountains with snow, the pictures through the bus windows do not even begin to show how beautiful they actually were.

We finally arrived in Venice where we thn loaded on to a ferry boat for a 25 minute ride to Piazza San Marco- the heart of Venice and where all of the Carnival celebrations were taking place. We were very overwhelmed when we arrived into the Riva degli Schiavani port because there were thousands and thousands people swarming everywhere, snapping pictures of all the people dressed up in costumes. It was like the people in costumes were celeberties and the people taking the pictures (like us) were the paparazzi. At one point, a bunch of people dressed in costumes were sitting in a local caffe and swarms of people were surrounding the window looking in on them just to take pictures of them, like they were someone famous. I'll admit I crowded the window to take a few pictures myself but had to delete them because of the glare of the window.

The first thing on our to-do list was to buy a mask and that's exactly what we did. People everywhere were wearing them and they are sold everywhere in stores and at kiosks that line the streets. The masks are worn at the Carnevale but they are worn at other times as too because it permits the wearer a sort of secret identity and the ability to interact with members of society outside of their social class. The masks diminish the class differences that exist among members of society. Sometimes they are also worn for criminal activities or romantic encounters. The type of mask we bought was a Columbine which is a half mask decorated with gold, silver, crystals, and feathers.

For the remainder of the afternoon, we strolled though Piazza San Marco, admiring thesights and architectures. We also strolled through the streets and found the Ponte di Rialto which was the first and only bridge to cross the Grande Canal until the 19th century. We crossed over the bridge and which was packed with tourists flocking into and out of the shops and markets that line the bridge. And you guessed it... we treated ourselves to Gelato! It gets better and better every time. :) The day was beautiful and I'm so glad I went. Emily and I just kept talking about how we want to come back to Venice some year and dress up ourselves and have people take pictures of us all day. Later in the evening, we boarded the boat back to the main land and headed back to Florence on the bus. An exhausting day but definitely worth it and I reccomend it to anyone traveling to Italy during Carnival season.