After our train to Venice, Caitlin and I met up with our other friends from Queen Mary. We found our way to our hostel (which was AMAZING -- double rooms with private bathrooms, a huge kitchen, plus it was very clean and cheap to boot!). After settling in, we grabbed a quick dinner at a nearby cafe. It had a billiards table and a few guys brought their dogs with them while they played a game. I've noticed that the US and the UK aren't dog friendly when compared to the continent. People bring their dogs in small restaurants, on the metro, and in shops.
After dinner we headed back to the Grand Canal, got gelato, looked at Carnevale window displays and walked around the canals.
Some of the simpler masks we found. We planned to come to Venice during their famous Carnevale and it ended up being even better than we had hoped!It was nice to just wander around that night, espeically after tearing through Rome for 2 days. Venice is a great place to just walk around... I think you can't really experience it unless you let yourself get lost in the canal system and find new shops, homes, and buildings you never expected.
We found a small-ish street party in a big square and after hanging out for a bit, decided to head back to the hostel. The next morning we woke up early to buy food from a local grocery store, made breakfast and packed a lunch (don't forget -- we're all broke college students, despite the international travel), and headed back to the center of town.
On a side note, the Venetian does a pretty good job imitating parts of Venice. Vanessa and I kept having trouble believing that it was real and we weren't on the strip. ;)
The first thing on our list of things to do in Venice: a gondola ride!! It was so much fun! I now have a lot of respect for the gondoliers... the boats are tough to maneuver, but we never hit anything - even in the tiniest canals. It was a beautiful day and all of us had a ton of fun. The gondola ride was such an incredible way to start off an even more incredible day.
A nice group picture on the gondola ride (minus Haider, who graciously took the photo). I resisted the urge to ask the gondolier to sing to us, haha. He told us cool historical things about Venice and answered our random questions about the canals instead.
Right after we finished our gondola ride, something caught Kevin and my eye -- chocolate. A little shop was selling chunks of chocolate so Kevin bought one and I bought some champagne (my favorite kind from home) and we shared for the rest of the day while we walked around Venice. Classy, I know. =)
One of my favorite pictures from Venice... how pretty! I had already thought the little bridge was beautiful with the hanging flowers and then a gondola appeared, making it that much better.
My friends and I decided (unanimously) that the most important thing we needed to do while in Venice was for each of us to buy a mask and wear it the entire day. So while we were walking toward St. Mark's Square, we stopped by a bunch of mask shops to find ones we liked. Some of the masks were simply incredible. None of us got full masks, but the more ornate ones were absolutely beautiful. They were so detailed! We walked into a few mask shops that were very expensive just to take a look at them. It was too bad that most shops didn't allow pictures (although I snuck a few!).
After all of us had found masks, we made our way to St. Mark's Square, pausing when we passed an interesting place or a gelato shop (by the end of the trip, we could tell when Emily had found a gelato shop because we'd hear the bells on her mask as she skipped off to see if they served the Nutella flavored kind, haha!). My friend Haider and I began playing a game where we would stare at people menacingly from under our masks just to make them uncomfortable. It was so much fun!! We got a bunch of really great reactions, haha. =)
This is the mask I got. It was honestly one of the first ones I found when I actually started looking. I fell in love, but decided to keep looking for a while, just in case. Obviously I ran back for it. If you look really closely, you can see music notes on it. How perfect!
When we got to St. Mark's Square, there were thousands of people there for Carnevale. The entire square was packed with people there to see all the great costumes and masks. I had seen some pictures of Carnevale, but seeing the intricate costuming in person was incredible. Regular people spent months working on their costumes for Carnevale. You could barely tell that some of them were homemade. Most looked professionally done -- delicate, beautiful, and one-of-a-kind.
Posing with a masked couple. There were so many great costumes!
One family dressed up their little boy as a gondolier and let everyone fawn over how cute he was and take tons of pictures. ADORABLE!
A family of clowns! One of the running jokes of the trip was "Il Maximus de Circo ha rubato Hilary!" which translates roughly to "The Circus Maximus has kidnapped Hilary!!" I guess that's not much of a stretch on some days, haha.
There were three raptors running around the square at one point. Their mouths even moved and they shrieked while chasing and attacking people! It was really fun to watch.
This was my favorite costume of the day. He just looks so regal! The costume was just incredible.
After looking at the costumes for a while, we went into St. Mark's Basilica. The entire ceiling was covered in mosaics and plated in gold. It was spectacular. The designs on the interior served as an inspiration to Bentley's designs in Westminster Cathedral in London (I had to write a paper on it for my Architecture class). They wouldn't allow pictures inside, but the entryway gives you a good idea of what the ceiling looked like.
Bits of the domed ceiling in the entryway... it was gorgeous! I can't even imagine how long it took to assemble that...
When we were done looking around the Basilica, we went back to the Grand Canal and watched the sunset on the Ponte di Rialto, one of the most famous bridges in Venice (this picture is of Vanessa and I right before the sun went down. We're pretty much adorable). After the sunset, we met up with one of Emily's friends from home (who was studying abroad in Venice) and had dinner by the canal.
We sprung for fine Italian wine at dinner. Yum!
There were some parties going on throughout the city at a bunch of the different Piazzas. One of the more interesting ones had professional dancers doing the tango on stage. We dropped by a few of those then caught the last buses back to the hostel.
The next morning, we had breakfast and headed up the campanile across from St. Mark's Basilica. We could see the entire city from there -- it was so pretty!
See? Beautiful. =)That afternoon we left Venice and took a train to Lucerne, doubting that Lucerne could be as exciting as Venice had been... but we were wrong! So there's your cliff hanger. ;) Even though Venice was AMAZING, Lucerne still managed to be even more exciting (albeit in a different way).
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