1. You drink hot wine because you cannot feel your body.
2. Random Italian men with pink hair and tights come up and kiss you.
3. You get on Russian TV.
Now, the first and third happened to me, but the second didn't. However, the second one did happen to my friend.
Yesterday I went to the Carnivale di Venezia, and it was an adventure. This carnival is basically the mardi gras of the United States. Everyone dresses up, wears masks and is merry. I was in my fairy tale land because if I could travel back into time it would be to the 18th century when the people wore ball gowns. There were ball gowns everywhere, and they were all individually unique.
I started off the day at 7:45 when I had to pry myself out of bed and shower. I was originally supposed to shower at that time, but my roommate Jess slept in longer than she had planned on and Lydia set her alarm for the wrong time. So I didn't hop in the shower until 8 and were were supposed to leave at 8:20.
Now if you know me, you know I can get ready and be showered in 10 minutes when I put my mind to it. So, after all my roommates and I ran around our apartment getting dressed, drying our hair, etc. we walked out of the door at 8:30. Not too bad.
We reached the train station at 8:50 when we were supposed to meet Bus2Alps at 8:40 because the busses were leaving at 9:00. Bus2Alps is an organization around here that is essentially a travel organization that plans trips, and you pick which ones you want to go on.
When we got to the train station lobby it was packed. I checked in at the N-Z stand and waited to hop on a bus with my friends.
Once we all were situated on a bus, I thought it was the only bus going to Venice. Ha, no...I quickly found out that there were 400 American students leaving with me to go to Venice for the carnival. Guess we weren't the only ones excited for this.
The trip to Venice took about three and half hours. We traveled through some of the mountains and they accumulated A LOT of snow. Now I understand why the Italians were freaking out and some classes were canceled. In the city we didn't get that much at all.
During the bus ride I watched Gone Baby Gone for the first time. It was a really good movie if you haven't seen it yet. It's one of those movies that has a twist at the end and you think "oh my gosh."
When we finally reached Venice we got off of the bus and walked to the water taxi platforms. We hopped on the taxi that would take us to San Marco because we were told that was this place where everything happened. A plethora of people piled onto to taxi, which was basically a ferry. There were some people already dressed up in ball gowns heading into town. I had already put on my mask and was ready to go.
It was about a 20-30 minute ride into San Marco. Once we finally got there our group decided to find food because we were starving. At about 12:30 we found somewhere to eat. It was back a few streets from the water because we were hoping it would be a little less expensive than the ones by the water.
We ate at this really cute, family-owned restaurant. The place could probably fit 20 people or less in because our group had 10 people and we took up half the place.
The waitress was the owner, or at least that's the vibe I got. She was this bigger, Italian woman who is the epitomy of the Italian mother. I could just picture her reaming me out if I was her child and I did something wrong. She was just so cute too.
For lunch I ordered a margherita pizza and our table of four split a bottle of water and red wine. It was all delicious and satisfied my stomach.
Afterwards we stared walking around the streets hoping to find stores selling face masks for the girls who had not gotten one yet. As we walked around we kept running into dead ends because of the canals...which were not frozen!
We walked down these very narrow allies hoping they would lead somewhere. We seriously felt like we were mice in an obstacle course because all of the buildings were tall and led to some places, but ended at others.
After probably 20 minutes of roaming we found the place where we got dropped off at by the water taxi. By this time we were freezing. It was painfully cold yesterday. I could not feel my fingers or toes, so we decided to keep going into stores to warm up while the girls looked for masks.
As we walked through the streets you saw more of the dressed up people. At one point a parade of people were walking by with music and there was a group of telle tubbies! This is when my friend was randomly kissed and she was in such shock. When we came back for more she ran away. We were all laughing so hard.
For the next hour or so we kept wandering the streets looking at all of the interesting people. We found the main square where the big celebration was and then went off to find somewhere to sit inside for a bit.
We found a wine bar where we were not welcome at first. The waiter asked how many of us there were and when we said 10 he said "no, no, no." We were freezing and said we could split up into different tables. He finally decided to let us stay, although I'm pretty sure he wasn't happy about it. I was too cold to care.
I ordered a cup of hot chocolate at a wine bar. Yes, I did this because it sounded do good and it warmed me up. Everyone else ordered wine. The waiter brought little cheese sandwiches with the wine and scones for my with my hot chocolate. Despite the waiter's resentment for American girls sitting in there, it was a cute place.
While were were sitting drinking, this couple sat down near us. Bethany started talking to them and we learned the woman was from Indiana. She was in her late 20s or early 30s and she said she currently lived in England. She studied abroad in Australia during college and fell in love with traveling. Now she's either dating or married to the English man she was with. They were cute and all dressed up.
After we finally warmed up we decided to brave to cold again. We roamed through the streets and found a part of San Marco that was supposed to have a lot of activities going on. It's where a well-known bridge is located too. It was definitely a lot busier than the quiet streets we were walking through before.
Bethany and Lydia found a stand selling confetti that we all through around at each other. I felt like I was a kid again.
When we made it back to the main square there was music playing and it was dark out. A lot of people were dancing up front so we decided to go up closer. We accidentally walked past the ticket gates because we didn't realize you had to pay to get in. When we finally did realize it we just decided to stay up there.
After 20 minutes or so I needed to find heat because when I get cold I get grumpy. When we met back up with a few of the girls they said they couldn't find anywhere to get into because they were all packed with people.
So while we were walking around we saw this group of older people dancing in their costumes. One older man was so cute and grabbed me by the arm and started to spin in circles with me. I just laughed the entire time.
After the dancing we went back into the main plaza and this is when my friends and I ended up on Russian TV. Someone from a local Russian news station was there to film the event. We were able to communicate with him because Yelena can speak fluent Russian because she was born in the Ukraine and she speaks Russian with her parents.
So we danced and had a fun time while we were on some random, local channel in Russia that we'll never see.
By this point my toes were screaming in pain. We had about an hour and half left to kill so we found this restaurant that was reasonably priced right outside the main plaza. I ordered something I cannot remember the spelling of, but it was a pasta filled with ricotta cheese and spinach with tomato dressing. It was delicious.
After we finished dinner we went back out to the main plaza and went to get hot wine because Erika told us we had to try it. On our walk over one of the main singers started singing Grease in Italian. It's one of my favorite movies so of course I busted out in singing and Bethany and I sang our lungs out on our way to get some wine. When we met the rest of the group at the wine stand we were all singing it in English.
By the time it was 9:10 we decided we should go catch a water taxi because we had to be back at the buses by 10.
Once we hopped on the first water taxi we saw, we realized we were with about 20 other students from Bus2Alps, so we figured we were on the right one. Ten minutes into the ride, we realized we had gotten on the wrong route. We were on route number one and we were supposed to be on route number two.
We got off at a couple stops later and then hopped on the right one and it took us to our stop. We ended up being 10 minutes late, but the buses weren't even at the bus stops yet. So thankfully we didn't miss anything.
I was so thrilled to be on a warm automobile again. We finally pulled into the Florence train station at 2 A.M. Walking back was a bit brutal because it was cold and all I wanted was my bed. Thankfully 30 minutes later, I walked up into my apartment and plopped right into bed. After going for 20 hours I was pooped. I looked forward to a long and restful sleep and having no obligations the next day.
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