Venezia per Carnevale !

Ciao tutti! So I got back from Venice on Sunday night! (: It was seriously such an amazing trip. This weekend Carnevale started in Venice so there was people walking around in costumes and masks the whole weekend. If you don't know what Carnevale is because my parents didn't.. it's basically like Mardi Gras and Halloween at the same time. Click on the link to read more about it on Wikipedia. Okay I'll go through everything that happened during our 3 day trip in Venice!

Thursday night my friend Kaylin came over for dinner and then slept over. We got to bed probably at around 1 am after packing and getting everything ready for Venice. Then bright and early Friday morning at 5 am we woke up to go to Porta Nuova with my host dad. We had to be there at 6:30.. We meet up with all the other exchange students and volunteers. There was about 20 kids from our Rivoli chapter, the Torino chapter and 2 girls from Alessandria. Then there was 3 volunteers, one guy who actually went to Ohio for a year and Miki our Italian teacher. The train ride was like 4 hours and I pretty much slept the entire time. We got to Venice then had about a 45 minute walk to our hostile with our suitcases but I didn't mind, walking through Venice was beautiful. The first sights of Venice were completely gorgeous. There's absolutely no cars or streets, just water and boats and gondola's. There's really no other city in the world like Venice. We walked up and down all the little tiny ponte (bridges) until we finally got to our hostile. We just dropped off our luggage in a closet since our rooms still weren't ready and then were off to Piazza San Marco, pretty much the center of Venice. San Marco is only about a 15 minute walk from our hostile, our location was perfect!We went inside the church in Piazza San Marco and it was so gorgeous, then we had some free time to just walk around, all my Italian friends warned me that there would be a bunch of pigeons in Venice and they were right! haha we bought some masks for Carnevale and put them on. Friday night we were allowed to go off on our own and do our own thing our curfew was just 1 am. I went with a group of my friends to Hard Rock Cafe. I was soooo excited to eat American food again for the first time in like 5 months. It was delicious <3 Then afterwards we went to a bar and then went back to the hotel.

Saturday we got up and went to Burano and Murano, 2 islands of Venice. The weather was horrible, it was pouring rain and there was really strong winds but I still had a lot of fun anyway! I think it's so cool how in Venice instead of using cars, busses, metros or taxis, you just use boats or gondala's for literally everything. There's police boats, taxi boats, everything. Anyway on Saturday we took a taxi boat to the 2 islands. First we went to Murano which is known for glass-making. We watched a little presentation of a guy make a class cup and a glass horse. It was cool and once he finished making the glass horse he lit it on fire. The presenter explained everything in Italian and then he realized there was a group of French tourists and so then he just switched into French and explained everything again, then there were some German's so he switched to German. I hope one day I'll be able to do the same! We grabbed some lunch at a little cafe in Murano, there were some men there speaking the Venice dialect and I could not understand a word.. it sounded really strange to me! Also the Venice accents are a little different too. I bought a couple glass bracelets for my Italian sisters and friends then we hopped on the boat taxi and were off to Burano! Burano's well-known for it's super bright and colorful houses. By the time we got to Burano the weather was about 10000x worse than it was before. I initially came to Venice with 2 umbrella's, I was well prepared because I knew that one umbrella I would probably end up loosing or breaking. However being the amazingly nice person I am I gave away both of my umbrella's to 2 of my friends who had forgotten umbrella's. I figured that I would just share an umbrella with someone but it wasn't that easy. Everytime I tried ducking under someone else's umbrella they'd end up poking me in the head or eye with the pointy part of the umbrella. So after a while I just gave up and went senza umbrella (without). In Burano I was completely drenched. It looked like I had taken a shower. But whatever, I didn't really care! I was in Venice! In Burano we walked around and took pictures of all the pretty houses for as long as we possibly could stand the weather. Then we found a cafe and got hot chocolate to warm up our freezing wet bodies. We got back on the taxi boat and went back to the mainland of Venice. Then the plan was to go to a museum but it wasn't open so we all started heading back to the hotel. Except somehow in the tiny narrow, extremely crowded streets of Venice our big group got separated  The group I was in was without any volunteers or anyone who knew where we were going. We were completely lost. I think I have bad luck when it comes to getting lost because every vacation I've been on in Italy so far I've gotten lost; the sea, the mountains and now Venice. At this point I was soaked, every single part of me was drenched with water. I was not happy. We wandered around the streets for probably like an hour until we found the hotel. Once we got there I changed into warm clothes and drank like 740450394469346 hot chocolates from the free coffee machine. Once everyone was warmed up we headed back out into Venice for dinner at a pizzeria with everybody. After dinner we had free time again until our curfew at 1 am. My friends and I saw this reggae music concert, it was hilarious. I'm not sure if the guy singing was speaking English or what.. it sounded like English but a really odd version sort of like "eyyyerybody" hahaha my friends and I all sang along and danced like idiots. There was one old man who I'm pretty sure was a pothead who was dancing like a maniac. It was interesting. Then we went to a bar and went back to the hotel.

Murano!

Burano! 

Reggae concert hahahaha

The last day the weather was absolutely gorgeous! I wish it would've been like that all weekend but oh well, can't complain I went to Venice! Sunday was the official starting day of carnevale. There was seriously soooo many people it was insane, and there were people everyone in crazy costumes. It was such an amazing atmosphere. First we went to the museum that we wanted to go to on Saturday. It's called Palazzo Ducale. It was so beautiful inside! We weren't allowed to take pictures but I snuck a few anyway ssshhh (; lol then afterwards we went to Piazza San Marco and saw il volo dell'angelo which is the angel that flys down from the sky signifying the start of carnevale in Venice. Then we took a gondola ride!!! I don't know why but I've always wanted to ride on a gondola I think it's just so Italian. We took like the poor people version of a gondola though since pretty much all of us are broke. That's one thing about exchange students we're literally all always broke. But I loved the gondola anyway it was so pretty! Afterwards we took a boat taxi to a little tiny island just to take some pictures of Venice.  Then we got some lunch and went to the train station and went back home :( I was so sad to leave, it was one of the funnest vacations of my life with all my friends and it went by way too fast!

il volo dell'angelo ! 

I'M ON A GONDOLA !

Palazzo Ducale 

It was crazyyyy 

everyone!

bye bye venice :'(