Venezia Carnevale.

 That's right, the Venice Carnival! And what an epic Saturday it was. Mary Kate, Steph and I took a day trip to Venice for the Carnival this last Saturday, the 18th of February. The best way to describe Carnival is a classier, more formal version of Mardi Gras. Carnevale is held three weekends out of the year from late January to mid February, and basically everyone just walks (drunkenly) around the streets at night with masks on. The masks are handmade in Italy, so of course we had to get some of those. More on that later though. To the left is Venice! We left Florence around 9:00 AM and got to Venice by 12:30. This is the port we stood at waiting for our water taxi to take us to Murano where we ate and watched a glass blowing demonstration. 

To the left is the glass blowing demonstration! It was incredible, he made a glass vase and a horse right in front of us. He took the hot glass out, which was attached to that metal rod, and played with the blob until it formed actual works of art. Below is a picture of the glass art he created - a horse and a vase of some sort. Glass blowing is apparently pretty big in Venice, so it was a pretty cool thing to see. I of course, being the klutz that I am, walked into the shop next door with anything and everything you could imagine being made out of glass (clocks, vases, jewelry, decorations, plates, etc) and broke the first thing I touched. Thankfully it was just a 6 euro necklace. The lady behind the counter was incredibly nice, I apologized profusely and told her I'd pay for it and she let me pick out another one! Needless to say, I didn't touch anything remotely breakable the rest of the day.

After the glass blowing demonstration we started walking the streets of Venice! As you can see, it's amazing.

Breathtaking, even.

 The main form of transportation within the city is boating, as seen above. Their cars are boats, so that was pretty cool to see. I seriously cannot get over the buildings in Europe -- I love how they are all old, connected, with different color walls and windows. They're all touching yet are all so different from each other; there's nothing like this back home, especially not in Texas. Below is a picture of part of our travel group for the day. A group of about twelve of us happened to get off of our charter bus around the same time, so it worked out quite nicely. This is the group with a Carnevale themed lady; there were lots of people dressed up like this throughout the city so of course we had to stop and take a quick picture. Shortly after this picture was taken, we all stopped and ate. Steph and I split a pizza, which was amazing. A massive pizza with artichokes (apparently it's artichoke season here in Italy), mushrooms and ham. Then the group (13 of us) got two liters of red wine with our meal. Let's just say it was a good start to our evening. 

After we ate we stumbled into (what seemed to be) the coolest mask shop we could find. The masks in most of Venice are all HAND MADE -- the owner of the store was actually making a mask as we walked in. Each mask was so intricate in their design, style and coloring, it was unreal. There were mask shops like this dispersed all throughout Venice, so we definitely had our fair share to choose from. Below to the left is a picture of me with my mask! I love it, it's absolutely beautiful. And authentic. As we came off our charter bus there were multiple stands of cheap Chinese made masks that you could get for 2 euro, but myself and my company all chose to splurge a bit and pay 10 euro to go for the real thing.


 I can't wait to hang this up in my room back home and put it on display for the world to see. I love it! This picture was taken on the water taxi ride from Murano to San Marco, the part of Venice where Carnevale is located. All 13 of us played some drinking game (we had each bought a bottle of wine, per person) so needless to say, we were the touristy, obnoxious American's of the water taxi ride. I could care less, because it was a blast.

Here we are, finally in San Marco for the Carnival! To the right is myself and Kelley, our Bus2Alps guide for the day. Bus2Alps is the company we booked our bus ride through and basically, their job for the day entailed taking us from Florence to Venice and then back. Kelley, however, knew who the cool kids were on the bus and decided to tag along with our crew for the day! Thank goodness for Kelley is all I have to say -- from everyone else I've talked to it's really easy to get lost in Venice, but not for us! Kelley has been to Venice multiple times, so not only was he AMAZING company during the day, he made sure we had a great time, saw all that we needed to see and, last but not least, survived. He also bought us all a few shots, definitely a bonus. Below is a (blurry) picture of the Venice Canal! It was packed in the city but Kelley was determined to get us there.

HAPPY CARNEVALE!!! There was loads of confetti every which way, so this shot was inevitable. We ended up leaving Venice around 10:30 PM, giving us just about a full 12 hours in this wonderful city. We got back to Florence pretty darn late, but so worth it.


So ya, that was our day trip to Venice in a nutshell! I've improved my formatting a bit -- it takes longer but looks much prettier. Next up, PRAGUE for my BIRTHDAY! I am excited beyond belief. Myself, Mary Kate and Steph all leave tomorrow evening around 7:00 PM on a 12 hour bus ride, putting us in Prague around 8:00 AM the next morning. So that should be fun. I cannot wait to see Jessica, one of my closest friends from back at school and my roommate for next year! We are going to have an epic weekend. A few of the things I'm looking forward to about Prague: seeing Jessica, my birthday, the food, the people, the sights, and the fact that BEER IS CHEAPER THAN WATER. That's right. Clearly I'm excited.


Partying like it's my birthday,


Julie