Venice Trip!

Salve!

So this past weekend I had the opportunity to go to Venice for the Carnival! And I must say it was a pretty incredible experience. This trip was put on by my study abroad program so all I had to do was pay a nice cheap price and they reserved the hotel and the bus to get there. It was really nice not to have to worry about where to stay or how to get there and since Venice can be an expensive city we were able to get a really good deal through the program. So on Saturday morning we all met up at the school and hopped on the bus to Venice. This was an optional trip that you can take with the program so most of the students in the program went. It was really cool to spend time with some of the people in the program that I didn't get a chance to hang out with normally so that was really cool. It was probably about a six hour total trip to Venice with a pit stop for food in the middle so it was a decent drive but well worth it. Once we got into Venice I was really excited. The bus dropped us off in Piazzale Roma and from there we had to cross a bridge to get into the city. In the actual city there are absolutely no roads or cars so we had to walk from the bus to the hotel which wasn't too far. As we were walking to the hotel I could not believe that I was actually here. We crossed the Grand Canal and I was pretty blown away at what I saw. We crossed a couple more canals taking multiple bridges everywhere and we got to the hotel. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and met back up to head into the main square, Piazza San Marco.
Since it was carnival the city was absolutely PACKED and it took us awhile to get to the Piazza but the views of the city kept me preoccupied. This place is definitely like a giant maze so it was very important that we stuck together as a group on our way to the Piazza. When we got to the Piazza there was an insane amount of people. The entire Piazza was packed and in the distance there was live music and a bunch of stuff going on. We met up with some tour guides and they gave us a nice 2 hour tour of some parts of the city. They also told us some interesting facts about the city and how Venice actually consists of 118 islands all connected by bridges and separated by canals. I could not believe that fact until I walked more around the city and saw all of the bridges I had to get across to get around haha. During the tour we would see a bunch of dressed up carnival characters and it was really neat. They would wear really elaborate costumes with really neat masks and I was able to get pictures of a few of them (check Facebook!). Once the tour was over the guides let us go and we were basically free to do whatever we wanted that evening. So me and a group of other students went to find a place to eat. We got through the crowds and ended up eating at a small place called Pizza 2000 haha and we got some pizza. Once we got some food we went back to the hotel for a quick stop and went back out to a bar in the city. The bar was a lot of fun and we were there for a little while until people ended up somehow getting split up. I ended up getting separated from our group and was left roaming the walkways of Venice trying to find my way back to the hotel. I didn't have a map so needless to say I was lost for quite awhile haha. But I couldn't complain because it was really neat walking around all of the canals. I knew our hotel was near the train station so I got there but had a lot of trouble finding it from there. I was finally able to find someone after a couple hours who actually located the hotel for me and then walked me there! That was really nice and I finally made it back to the hotel at around 4:30am after a few hours of being lost haha.The next day I woke up and went with a group to the islands of Burano and Murano (world famous for glass blowing).

We first made it to Burano and as our "tour guide/roommate" Felix said, "If Venice was black and white, Burano would be considered a rainbow." This place was extremely colorful with all of the buildings lined up and painted a different variety of really bright and attractive colors. It was really cool to see and of course they didn't have any roads or cars here either. There was also a really cool Duomo that appeared to be leaning and kind of resembled the leaning tower of Pisa haha. From Burano we went to another nearby island and saw a pretty neat church. After that we checked out the island of Murano which is world famous for their glass blowing. This island was really neat because there were a lot of really neat glass sculptures and objects you can buy. It really is an artwork here. We got some lunch where I had Spaghetti with Mussels which was delicious and then we had the opportunity to see a glass blowing demonstration. I'm not gonna lie this was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. they would heat up this rod with a ball of extremely hot glass at the end and then they would spin the rod, using numerous tools to shape the hot glass into the object they were making. This guy made a really cool vase looking object and then he made a glass horse! It was nuts and I'm really glad I saw that. And since the glass is so hot, they only have a minute or two to make they object they want before the glass cools down.

There were a lot of other glass stores that we checked out before heading back into Venice. When we got back to Venice I got myself a carnival mask and we stopped at the hotel for a quick break and then got some dinner and headed out. We had some Kebab for dinner and then I got some Gelato and we went back to the hotel, put on our masks, and got ready for our last night in Venice and went out to another bar. We were at the bar for a bit and unfortunately, since it was Sunday night there wasn't a ton of stuff to do after that. So the group of us went back to the hotel and everyone pretty much passed out. However, I was not ready to pass out at 2:30am in my last night in Venice and I proceeded to go back out into the city haha. As I was leaving the hotel I was talking outside with the guy that works at the front desk for a bit and then we heard some water hit the floor. That's when he told me that we had to stop talking because in Venice, if someone pours water out of their window, you need to shut up haha. I thought that was really interesting so after that I saw 2 other students that were also not done with the night yet and we ended up walking all the way to Piazza San Marco. At this time of the night it was nice because the Piazza was completely empty. It was really cool just to hang out there while it was completely empty and reflect on everything. We then took a boat (main mode of transportation) from Piazza San Marco to the train station on the Grand Canal. We then walked from the train station back to the hotel and got back at around 5:30am haha. I don't think my mask came off once that night. The next day I woke up, had breakfast, then we walked around for one last hour and headed back onto the bus. After about an hour and a half on the bus we stopped by a city called Verona where they have the third largest Roman "Arena" or Colosseum in the world so that was really cool. We then saw Juliets balcony which I think is where the famous "Where art thou Romeo" lines were said when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. That was neat to see, and after that we had some lunch, and apparently Verona is famous for their horse meat so I had the opportunity to try some horse which was quite interesting. We only spent about an hour and half in Verona bfore we had to head back to Torino. We got into Torino at around 7:30pm on Monday and that was the end of our trip. This trip was a truly incredible experience and I will never forget my time in Venice during carnival. This trip was definitely worthy of a nice long blog post haha so until next time.

Ciao!