Venezia Carnivale

Ciao from Venezia Carnivale!

This weekend we had our first big trip of the semester! We traveled to Venezia for the historic Carnivale celebration. Carnivale is a celebration that occurs in Venice for two weeks before Fat Tuesday. Carnivale occurs all over Europe, but the main city of celebration is Venice. Carnivale started so that the entire town could intermingle. The citizens of the town dress up in elaborate outfits with masks so you cannot tell who is who. This enables everyone to be treated equally because no one knows each individual's status. It was an INCREDIBLE experience.

Gondola in Venice canal

Hillary, Daniella, and I in front of the Rialto Bridge

I went with my roommate and a group of girls in my program that I hadn't really gotten to know yet. We got up at 4:45am on Friday to get to the 8:30 flight (eeeek). I ended up unfortunately being on a different flight than anyone else. My roommate and I arrived in Venice around 9:30am. We checked into our hotel and headed to explore before everyone else got there around noon. The first thing we realized was that Venice was WAY more expensive than Rome, which I wasn't expecting. We were able to find a cheap sandwich place to grab something to eat. After that we walked through the streets of Venice enjoying the sights and getting lost. It was absolutely freezing - a 15 degree windchill! We bundled up and wore pretty much every layer of clothes that we brought. The canals were not frozen anymore, but you could still see the chunks of ice from when they were earlier that week. Once our other friends arrived we started our walk toward St. Mark's and went shopping to buy more layers.  I ended up wearing four pairs of socks, 5 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and a jacket... and I was STILL freezing. We were staying a 20 minute walk from St. Mark's, which actually ended up being really nice because we were able to see more of the city and learn our way around.

Once we got to St. Mark's it was dark out, and we were all so freezing that we ended up just huddling in a little tourist shop to try to get regain feeling in our toes. We headed back to our hostel, then went out to some bars close to our hotel that night. We couldn't find our original place that we were going, so we asked a Venetian local and he took us to some really cool bars on a side street. 

Jessica, Daniela, Daniella, Hillary, Kristen, and I in St. Mark's Square

Saturday we woke up around 10am to get ready for our long day ahead - the first official day of Carnevale! We headed to St. Mark's square and were amazed at all the costumed people on the way. We were able to make a quick stop by the Rialto Bridge on the way as well. 

We finally got to St. Mark's and it was AMAZING. There were people in elaborate costumes everywhere just enjoying the day. There was a huge stage set up on one end of St. Mark's with music and people dancing. We explored that area - went to the lagoon, went in St. Mark's Basilica, and of course took pictures with the gondolas. After exploring the area we headed back to the stage to enjoy the performances. Some of the girls I came with got cold and tired so they went back to our hotel, but me and Daniella stayed and enjoyed the shows. They had the stage set up where they had a front area with a gate around it then the back area for everybody. Since we were there before the main events started, we were able to stay in the front section. We found out later that they actually ended up charging 15 euro to get in this section! 

Daniella, Hillary, and I

Participant in the costume contest

Suddenly we found ourself in the press box for the main events of the weekend! There was a parade that day, and it ended in St. Mark's, so it actually ended up surrounding us in the front section. The parade was set up to honor the history of Carnivale, with each group in the parade representing a different time period of Carnivale celebrations. It ended with the Precession of the Marie. The 12 most beautiful girls in Venezia are selected and presented to the crowd, and the winner is chosen. This is an incredibly huge honor and is kind of similar to Miss America. The girls were so pretty, and the only ones without masks. 

After this parade a costume contest was held. The outfits for this were incredible! It was so cool because they let the participants in the contest into the area where we were, so we actually got to take pictures with everyone participating in the contest. These costumes were insane - I wish I could've gotten pictures of every single one. The costumes all ranged from the traditional Carnivale costumes to Van Gogh to Smurfs to a deck of cards. During our excitement of realizing we had accidentally gotten such a once-in-a-lifetime experience to mingle and meet the participants in the events of carnivale, we also met two Australians who were studying in Sweden. Their names were Emma and Anthony, and they were in just as much shock as us. We spent the next two hours freaking out about how lucky we were to be getting such experiences. We ended up hanging out with them the rest of the day, and Emma is even coming to stay with us in Rome! Their program is over so they've been traveling around with friends, and she wanted to come to Rome but didn't want to come alone. She's so much fun and so nice! 

After the parade ended and the costume contest was over, we headed to meet up with my friend Julie. She's from Clemson and is in my sorority. I was SO excited to see someone from Clemson because I haven't seen the majority of my friends from there since finals week. It was so nice to see a familiar face. We met up and headed for a break from the cold at a pub. We hung out there for awhile, but unfortunately she was leaving to go back to Florence at 7. 

Once she left, we headed back to St. Mark's for the opening party. This event was the official opening to Carnivale in Venice where everyone comes out and dances. We were up by the stage again enjoying ourselves and two of our friends from our program in Rome showed up. It was so nice to see them since I had gone to Venice with people I didn't know as well. It was SO much fun in St. Mark's - there was a dj and hundreds of people in masks just enjoying the celebration. It was such an experience. Although Carnivale is usually compared to Mardi Gras in the United States, it is actually very different. Although there is still drinking, Carnivale is much more of a celebration of culture. It was so fun to see how much tradition was involved. When we travel to a place, we are able to go see all the sights, but it is hard to actually experience the culture every place we go. However, in Venice we were surrounded by it. The elaborate costumes you see in pictures of Carnivale are not paid street performers, they are the Venetian citizens celebrating their history and Carnivale. After the party in San Marco ended, we headed to get dinner at a pizza place then a couple different bars. We met so many people and everyone was just celebrating Carnivale in the streets. There were djs set up at random street corners and everyone was wearing masks. It was SO much fun.

Flight of the Angel

After the long day, we woke up early for an even longer one. We had to be out of our hotel at 10:30, so we got up and headed back to San Marco for the Flight of the Angel, one of the biggest events of the opening of Carnivale. The angel 'flies' from the Tower in San Marco down to the stage. Hundreds of people in costumes come out to watch the event.  We all expected the angel to basically zip line down, but she went down extremely slow. Everyone was watching, including the cooks working in San Marco.

Flight of the Angel in St. Mark's

After the Flight of the Angel, we headed to go souvenir shopping. I am collecting shot glasses from each place I go to so I can display them when I get home so I made sure to get that. Some of the people I was with bought some jewelry and some glass. After this we were so exhausted that we went back and just sat at the hotel lobby for an hour and a half. I drank three cups of espresso, but it still had basically no effect. Daniella even fell asleep in the storage room.

Eventually we made ourselves to venture back to San Marco to see what was happening there. We came in to the end of another costume contest. They had music again after that, so we just enjoyed ourselves in the crowds of San Marco. After awhile we all had to go to the bathroom and needed a break from the cold, so we got sandwiches and gelato. I know, I know, it was cold why were we eating gelato?! But it's just so good no one can ever resist. After that we headed back to San Marco and watched a jazz concert. By this time, it was around 10pm, so we headed to the train station to catch our 11pm train.

Traveling is exhausting

We thought since we had an overnight train we were going to get beds. We got on the train and it was seriously the train scene out of Euro Trip. I was EXHAUSTED and getting so cranky, and we had no idea how to get the beds to pull down. We eventually successfully got 4 out of the 6, but could not get the last one. It was Jessica, Kristen, two other girls that we didn't know studying in Rome, and a man in the car of our train. Jessica and Kristen decided to share a bed and the two other girls were going to share one, but they were creeped out by the other man in our cab. I was exhausted, so I passed out until a man working for the train came to our door. Apparently we did not pay to have beds (didn't know you had to..) so he got very angry and put our beds back into seats. So for our 6 hour train ride we had to sit up and try to sleep. It was so uncomfortable and we were all cranky from no sleep. We finally got back into Rome around 7 and home to our apartment around 8am. I passed out immediately from one of the longest, but most fun and exciting weekends of my life. All in all, despite the cold, carnivale was a success!


Some pictures of the costumes: