Carnevale a Venezia

Trip Start Jan 06, 2010
1
10
23
Trip End Apr 30, 2010


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Where I stayed

Flag of Italy  , Veneto,
Monday, February 8, 2010

Almost immediately after returning from Perugia, a few of us started packing for a three day weekend in Venice. We were a little worried about our flight with Ryanair, but it really couldn't have gone more smoothly. We got into Venice around 8pm on Saturday, checked into our apartment, and immediately set off for St Mark's Square and the opening festivities of Carnevale.  If you're not familiar with it, Carnevale, or Carnival, is a 10 day series of parades, masquerades, balls, and general festivities, essentially the more civilized precursor to our Mardi Gras.  There were all kinds of costumed characters walking around, and naturally my primary souvenir is a Venetian mask, hand painted in Venice.
We spent all day Sunday exploring the city, and did the same on Monday until 5 when we took our bus back to the airport. Beyond the regular stops at the Bridge of Sighs, which was horribly disfigured by advertising (see image...), Piazza S. Marco, and Ponte Rialto, we found many other incredible buildings and feature in the city
Opening festivities
Opening festivities
. The island seems large when looking at a map, but it's actually very small, just VERY dense.  It's hard to get truly lost, but very easy to get turned around.  The little streets criss-cross and weave around so many canals that we often found ourselves looping around the area where we were trying to get to.  It wasn't really a bad thing though, since we ended up coming across things we wouldn't have known to look for, like a leaning tower (who needs to go to Pisa?). 
One thing I was very surprised at way the utter lack of night life. We all assumed that during Carnevale especially, people would be roaming around the city at all hours, but everything shut down by 11!  So we ended up just walking around looking for people, but St Marks was empty, as was any other Piazza we found. It was still nice though, as the city is extremely photogenic.  It's also surprisingly clean, without much of the odor issues that I was warned about. In reality, Venice is actually much cleaner than most of Rome; on our walks back to the apartment at night, we would constantly run across cleaning teams with brooms sweeping the paths.
In general, it was obviously a lot of fun, and mostly because we didn't have to actually do anything. It was such a nice break to just be able to walk around the city with no real goal or time-line, unlike what we do in Rome. 
Definitely my most enjoyable weekend yet! I think my next trip won't be until spring break when I go to Paris and Chamonix for a week. Money's a little tight, but I'm still looking at a couple of weekend trips, at least to Pompeii and Florence. I'll keep you all informed!

A pił tardi!

More pictures below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2364593&id=16926863&l=e8b5819fee
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