Carnevale in Venice, Italy

What a whirlwind of a weekend! We went to Venice this weekend, for the Carnevale celebration. We took overnight trains both ways, so we only spent one full day in Venice. It was exhilarating and exhausting!

We left Vienna at 11:00pm on Friday night. The exchange program planned this trip, so there were over 200 exchange students that went - it was a great way to meet other students, from all over the world (although almost everyone I talked to was from North America..). The train ride was a little over 10 hours, and we were assigned to sleeper cars with six bunks in each car. The last car of the train was the "Disco Wagon", which was basically an empty train car that had been transformed into a bar and dance floor. The train ride was one of the most fun, yet bizarre experiences I have ever had. We were all very happy to get off the train in the morning onto stable and substantially less sticky ground after a night in the Disco Wagon.

Disco Wagon

We either had to carry our backpacks with us all day, or pay 12 euro for a locker, so all of us girls decided to stuff one backpack with everything we needed for the weekend, and split the cost of checking it. This meant we all wore the same exact clothes from Friday-Sunday, and only freshened up by brushing our teeth and combing our hair!

We pulled into the Venice station at 9:15 on Saturday morning and were off on a 14 hour sightseeing spree! The reason we were in Venice was for the Carnevale celebration, which is a Venetian festival characterized by masks and costumes. Everyone in the city was wearing elaborate masks and outfits. There are stands and shops all over selling the masks; the ones we encountered were priced in the range of 3 to 1,800 euro! We all purchased masks at the stands, in hopes of fitting in among the locals - although we quickly realized how difficult they made navigating and ended up carrying them around most of the day.

As a group, we agreed that you cannot say you've experienced Venice unless you ride a gondola, so we broke up into smaller groups and found the gondolas! Our gondolier refused to sing, but we forgave him as he provided us with a historical tour as he guided us along for nearly an hour. We were dropped off near Piazza San Marco, the main square where many of the festivities were taking place. It was unbelievably crowded, but the people watching was fantastic! There were all sorts of costumes and small street performances happening. We walked around and watched for a while, before heading off in search of lunch!

I knew I was going to be in heaven with the food, and it was actually quite challenging to get all of my Italian food dreams fulfilled in only 14 hours! We ate lunch at a small restaurant, and I went with the most basic of Italian dishes - spaghetti al pomodoro. It was delicious!! We were all freezing and hungry, so the food and atmosphere was a great break from the cold.

After lunch, we continued to walk around and again found ourselves in Piazza San Marco - this was not intentional, but those streets are just too hard to navigate! We walked all the way through the Piazza to the coast, and then walked nearly an hour down the waterfront. There were so many people out, and hundreds of stands selling various souvenirs and trinkets! Along the walk, we stopped and got gelato - my second Italian eating goal was completed.

Back to Piazza San Marco we went, and got in line to go inside St. mark's Basilica. The interior was incredible (and heated, which was a plus!), but we couldn't take any pictures. It amazes me in the cities I've been to how old everything is; our gondolier took us past a building that was nearing its 1500th anniversary! After the Basilica we headed the opposite way up the the waterfront to watch the sun set.

After the sunset, we still had 4 hours until our train so we headed back to the center of Venice. Four of us stopped at a restaurant further off the beaten path, which was necessary to get away from the crowds! A friend and I split a grilled vegetable pizza (Italian food dream number three!), which was quite possibly the best pizza I have ever had.

We continued to walk around more, and the nighttime festivities were beginning. There was an odd transition from the costumes and masks we had seen earlier in the day, to an Italian version of Halloween. Earlier in the day men and women had been in full makeup and dressed in colonial type outfits. Now we began to see everything from pirates to smurfs to army men and even multiple Lance Armstrong costumes!

On our way back to the train station, we took a longer route to see a little more of the city. It started thunder-storming, but luckily the rain was not too heavy. We joked about how we have thus far made very dramatic exits from cities - first the blizzard in Saalbach and now a February thunderstorm in Venice! We picked up our bag at the station, and boarded the Disco Wagon again.

The power was not working on our wagon, so our rooms were pitch black and freezing. The combination of being exhausted, damp from the rain, freezing from being outside all day, and now the power outage brought out a great deal of frustration and emotion in everyone. It was eventually all sorted out - and we were able to move to a different car to sleep in the heat. We left Venice at 11:20 and were back in Vienna at 6:45am this morning. We immediately all showered and got back into our beds for a majority of the day, as nothing is even open on Sundays here.

We spent the afternoon and evening researching and planning more trips for coming month, including spring break. We have orientation for the next two weeks, so we won't be travelling now until Dublin on the 27th. I am looking forward to finally settling in and getting to know Vienna!

More Later, XOXO