Carnivale de Venezia!!

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Ciao!!
So over the lovely weekend of Valentine's Day, February 14, 15, and even Monday the 16 Ben and I traveled to Venice for Carnivale. For those of you not familiar with Carnivale, it's where the US gets the celebration of Mardi Gras. Basically Carnivale is a two week celebration before the start of the Lenten season where people, for some reason that I didn't catch on to, dress up in crazy costumes, intricate masks, and parade around like we're all at one big party.
Ben and I left for this eventful trip on Friday night at 10pm. We were taking a bus in conjunction with a travel agency who was running the trip. We met a few other study abroad students on the trip, which was necessary because they were the only other ones who spoke English (which wasn't even really a problem for me as I had an entire conversation with some old French ladies at breakfast one morning!...sorry for the digression but get so excited when I have real conversations in another language without intense struggle!!) Anyway, the bus trip was not without excitement...oh no. At our second rest stop of the ten hour trip from Aix to Venice, our talented bus driver backed into an overhang directly hitting a metal pole. This wouldn't have been that big of a problem had he not backed it into the window, shattering the entire back window of the bus. All we could do was laugh...so we did. The funniest part of the situation though, is that the pole he hit was the pole that indicated the height of the overhang (which didn't even matter because the bus was obviously taller). Anyway, I'm sure the driver had a much worse night that we did! After the driver patched up the bus with some cardboard, we continued on to Venice (this all happened at 4am).
Once we arrived in Venice at 9am Saturday morning (Valentine's Day) Ben and I set out to get lost. Venice is quite possibly the easiest city to get lost in. There is literally no organization to the streets, and many times we lead ourselves down roads ending in a drop off to a canal. In general, the city is magical. Right from the train station (which we had to take a short ride on to reach the island) there is a large bridge and the Grand Canal. Following random signs that it took me an entire day to figure out, we eventually got to the Rialto Bridge. (Luckily Ben figured out the signs quicker than me and he had a general idea of which direction to go). Honestly, I knew Carnivale was a big deal, but I had NO idea how crowded Venice would be. After pushing ourselves to the front of the bridge we finally got our first spectacular view of the canals, gondolas, vaporettos, houses, shops, and palaces situated right next to the water.
From the Rialto, we leisurely made our way to the Piazzale de San Marco, or in English, St. Mark's Square. The square includes St. Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the famous bell tower, and surrounding buildings. At one end of the square, the path (and when I say path I mean huge exit) opens up to the sea with two huge columns that were the welcoming symbols for boats traveling to Venice. We wandered around the waterfront for hours, looking at all the mask vendors, taking numerous pictures of the sea, and just adjusting ourselves to the new city. Of course, a bit of gelato and winding through the streets were involved as well.
As part of my birthday/Christmas present from Ben, we went on a guided boat tour of the city in the afternoon. I don't think a trip to Venice would have been complete without the views from the water. We went through a few smaller canals, and then down the entire Grand Canal with the guide telling us all about the buildings we passed on the way such as: Elton Johns house on an outer island, random palaces, universities, the house where James Bond Casino Royal was filmed, etc.) I missed a lot of the info because I was either in the back of the boat with Ben snapping pictures, or huddled inside the cabin trying to avoid the frigid wind. Either way, the tour was great, and after we grabbed some dinner and headed back to the hotel. Our hotel was not in Venice, it was a forty-five minute vaporetto ride away to another island (I think). Anyway, it was pretty nice, and after the long day, all we needed was a hot shower and a place to sleep.
On Sunday, we woke up really early for breakfast and then jumped on the vaporetto back to Venice for another full day of adventures. We started at St. Mark's Basilica where we toured the 'museum' upstairs and took more amazing pictures from the upper level balcony of the square, the palace, and the sea. We definitely chose the right time to tour the church, because the service was being conducted, and the music was absolutely beautiful echoing through the arched domes and stone walls. We were able to see some of the service from a spot upstairs, and it was truly beautiful. After, we headed out to the balcony to watch the initial festivities of Carnivale in the square from above. Apparently many other people had that plan too, so after a little while we headed down to face down the crowds and become part of the madness that is Carnivale. With my face painted and gripping Ben's backpack to make sure we weren't separated, we squeezed our way to towards the parade. Of course we couldn't see anything, so Ben lifted me up to get some pictures. (he missed out on that one). We stayed in the square until a person dressed as an angel "flew" from the Bell Tower down into the crowds. It was pretty cool, but the pace the angel traveled at was quite anticlimactic.
After grabbing some lunch and gelato from little shops along the streets we made our way to the Accademia Museum. To reach the Accademia we crossed a major bridge, and the only wooden bridge in Venice. The Accademia was full of massive works of art dating back to what seems like the age of dinosaurs. Being in an art history class now made the museum even more interesting because not only were the pieces of art beautiful, we knew what time period they were from, we could point out artistic characteristics, and even recognize some of the painters! It's just nice sometimes to know that I'm actually getting something out of a class I never thought I'd truly enjoy. We ended up spending over two hours in the Accademia, which was well worth our time.
In search of a free bathroom for Ben, we ended up happily lost again, which lead to our long search for masks and Murano glass. Walking freely and taking in the views, we both found masks, and ended up searching for a specific restaurant for dinner. Searching for something specific in Venice is something you should never do. We ended up totally confused, going down back, cold dark allies that lead us no where. In the end, this worked to our advantage as we found a little restaurant on a small canal with a four course meal perfect for us and our budget! The food was awesome, Ben and I had seafood spaghetti for our first course (with mussels...and yes Mom, I eat mussels now, as well as ham), followed by roasted chicken for me and salmon for Ben, mixed salads for both of us, and some kind of lemony cake for dessert that was absolutely scrumptious!! All of this was enjoyed with a wonderful bottle of Rosé.
The next morning we again caught an early vaporetto into the city. We started our day off exploring the Doge's palace, which quite exceeded my expectations. Not only was there a magnificent courtyard, the palace was bigger than I could have ever imagined, with room after room of frescoed walls and artwork that would blow your mind. The palace contains one of Europe's largest rooms, and most certainly the largest in Italy (at least 30 ft tall, and almost the size of a football field). The paintings that cover the wall of this room are phenomenal with almost impossible detail for their size. My favorite part of the palace though, was the Bridge of Sighs and what it lead to. The bridge got it's name because it leads to the prison, and as the inmates would walk across it, they would sigh as they got their last glimpse of the water. The prisons were a tangled maze of small wooden doors, iron clad with locks and rooms with wooden beds. There was even a room with blocks of cement with the original inscriptions and doodles that prisoners occupied their time with.
Exploring the palace took a good two and half hours, and after we roamed the city searching for a burger to satisfy Ben's hunger. I ended up with an amazing local sandwich as Ben had McDonald's. Once our hunger was satisfied we headed to the Bell Tower for a view of the city. At the top of the Bell Tower, not only was the view gorgeous, the wind graced us with her presence and froze my face and fingers. (All in all, the entire weekend was freezing, but the sun and hugs from Ben helped with cold.) We had a few hours left after enjoying the views from what I'd say is the highest point in the city. So once again we went wandering through the streets, ate some gelato (yes, even though it was cold), and just enjoyed the relaxing nature of our trip.
At six, we headed to the train station to get ourselves back to Mestre, where our bus would meet us. On the bus at 7pm, we made it back to Aix by 5am, just in time to get a few hours of sleep before I had to get up and study for my 12 o'clock test. It was worth every ounce of exhaustion today though. Venice is an absolutely breathtaking place, and Carnivale brought even more excitement to our trip. I can't wait for our winter break!!!
Arrivederci!
Libby

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Photos

Carnivale
My first encounter with costumes!

Typical Carnivale
A couple dressed up walking down the street

Dead End
Our first of many encounters with dead end streets into canals