I have my computer back! And it's time to finally tackle this blog! Vale, vamos. (For those of you playing along at home, anyone catch the glee reference in the title? )
I finished off the end of February's whirl-wind Eurotour with a visit to Venice for a weekend and for the first day of Carnival. It was beautiful, crazy, and freezing. I also met up with a friend of mine from Vanderbilt while I was there, which was great and we had such a fun time.
We actually stayed at a little hotel on Mestre, the mainland, and had to take the bus into Venice. Cross the bridge and all you can see is the Grand Canal, tons of boats, gorgeous buildings, tons of people, and a sign for carnival. While walking around the island we heard just about every language, accent, and dialect imaginable.
Every street is lined with restaurants, souvenir stores, bakeries, and mask vendors. The masks are everywhere; I'm not sure if it was just because it was Carnival or if it is always like this, but literally we could not walk in any direction without passing by a thousand masks. They can range from the cheap 2 euro masks to the 450 euro designer masks. Everyone wears them, but only on Carnival (of course, the locals probably don't, but it's a big touristy thing. We found out later that the island is really huge and that the locals live in a more remote area of the island.) Naturally I bought a cheap mask which was most likely made in China, but we got to look at a lot of really gorgeous beautifully designed (and very expensive) masks!
The food was amazing too, but very expensive. I only had pasta once; apparently eating a big bowl of pasta is not really considered a normal meal...it's more of a side dish. There were touristy gelato places everywhere, which were delicious. Lots of chocolate and bakeries everywhere. And so many obnoxious American tourists eeeeeverywhere! I understand now why the Europeans have such a bad impression of Americans....most of them are ditzy, loud, and annoying.
The second day we were there was the actual start of Carnival, which was crazy. The amount of people in the streets was absolutely absurd...it took us an hour and a half just to walk from one end to the other. Part of the reason was the sheer amount of people, the other because of all of the crowds around street performers and people in elaborate costumes. Lots of children, too, which I didn't really quite understand considering just how unhappy they all were...seriously, we could hear children crying no matter where we went.
Luckily, my friend and I spent most of the day off of the island. We purchased water bus tickets for the day and went off to Murano, the glass blowing island. There were a lot less people on the island, which is well known but a nice break from the chaos that was Venice. The canals are lined with glass blowing factories, cafes, and gorgeous bright colored apartments. We got to see two glass blowing demonstrations for free, and had fun just walking around the island and looking around.
We also spent a fair amount of time walking into all of the various glass shops on the island. Some of the things that the people on Murano make are just absolutely extraordinary. You go into one of these shops and everything is lined with chandeliers, sculptures, jewelry, etc. I looked into a few galleries too, to see the really remarkable things that glass blowers make. Things in these stores can generally be very expensive; even a single glass bead can cost something like 1.50 euro. It was a lot of fun just to look at the gorgeous things that they make, maybe not so much on the buying side.
We took the water bus then to another, more residential island called Llito to have dinner...what ended up being the best idea all night. I was getting progressively more and more sick ever since Sevilla, so we got tea and medicine and walked around the cute little island. Everything was a lot cheaper when we left Venice. We sat down and had a pizza dinner and tiramisu at an adorable neighborhood restaurant. It was delicious!
We returned to the island at night to see the big Carnival concert. A lot of the people had cleared out by then, and the concert was insane. I was confused because it ended around midnight/12:30...so definitely not on Spanish time. We tried to talk to a few Italians for a while, which proved to be a little difficult. They can understand a mix of English and Spanish, but I had actually begun to seriously lose my voice...which brought us to turn in for the night. I left Venice very tired, very full, and not being able to voice any sound, but it was completely worth it. I'll leave you with a picture of the Venice coast line from the water boat...absolutely gorgeous.
Up next: Carnival parts 2 and 3, and moving day! Spain is not good for my immune system! Stay classy.
Every street is lined with restaurants, souvenir stores, bakeries, and mask vendors. The masks are everywhere; I'm not sure if it was just because it was Carnival or if it is always like this, but literally we could not walk in any direction without passing by a thousand masks. They can range from the cheap 2 euro masks to the 450 euro designer masks. Everyone wears them, but only on Carnival (of course, the locals probably don't, but it's a big touristy thing. We found out later that the island is really huge and that the locals live in a more remote area of the island.) Naturally I bought a cheap mask which was most likely made in China, but we got to look at a lot of really gorgeous beautifully designed (and very expensive) masks!
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