This was not my Take on a Carnival.

Fact of the Day: Carnevale means without meat. Comes from the word Carne meaning meat.
Yesterday was my first real trip outside of Florence since I've been here and it was to Venice to see and experience the Carnevale in the Piazza de Saint Marco. Let me just say that this, in no way, was what I was expecting. It started off getting up at 6:30am, which was very painful on a Sunday morning. I think we can all agree on that. Then me and my roommate walked to the train station, which thankfully is right by our apartment, for 7:30am. When we got there, there must have been 200 other people there waiting to go on this trip. Around 8am, we boarded the bus and they played the Italian Job on the way there because it takes place in Venice. I didnt' watch it but I did try to sleep. Then around 11:30-12pm, we arrived at a port where we had to board a boat in order to get to the Carnevale. The boat ride was nice because for the first time in a while, the weather was beauuutiful. So we stood on the top deck and took some pictures. Around 1, we finally arrived to the Venice Carnivale. The first thing that me and my friend decided to do was buy ourselves masks because what kind of fun can you have without masks at a carnevale? So we went into a store and bought beautiful masks that were being sold all over the place for a variety of prices. When we left the store we started to head towards the central area where the Carnevale was taking place. Every couple of feet that we walked, we saw peopel in extravagant costumes with full skirts and the masks on and they played the part of the person they dressed up to be. They just walked around the area during the whole time that it took place. As we kept walking, more and more people started to show up. There must have been about 100,000 people at least, there to see the Carnevale which lasts over two weeks. Some of the costumes there were just insane and I couldn't believe it. The amount of effort that they put into these outfits is unbelievable especially for something that lasts only two weeks out of a whole year. But i guess that's the most exciting part about it. There were people dressed up from the age of 4 to people in their 80s. The way people were dressed, though, was my favorite part by
far, which is probably why I took over 200 pictures there. I went photo crazy but I think it was
completely necessary.

And these pictures were only from the beginning. We had about five and a half hours to spend here but around 3 my friend and I were starving so we decided to go out and find food. We headed out into more of the central Venice area, away from the Carnevale to find some inexpensive, non-tourist food. There were a bunch of restaurants all around so we went to this place where you order outside and you pick it up and go. I got a panini and it was soooo good. I think all the food here just tastes good all the time no matter what you eat. After eating that panini, me and my friend still weren't stuffed despite the fact that this panini was quite large. So for the next twenty minutes all we were doing was walking around and talking about how much more food we could eat because for some reason we were still starving. So we took that as a sign and decided to get gelato..yes again, becuase we were standing right outside one at the time. This time I spent 2 euro on a cup of chocolate and chocolate chip combo and let me just say that it was amazing!!!! I've come to the conclusion that I could eat paninis and gelatos for the rest of my life and never complain. When we finished there, we continued to look around and see more people dressed up in costumes up until the time when we had to head back to the boat. Here are some more I took:

At 6pm, my amazing day in Venice ended by meeting everyone in our group in front of our boat. By the end of the day, it was freezing!!! The whole day was sunny and not even windy but for some reason it ended up being freezing and my feet were frozen and it was so hard to walk down stairs because I couldnt' feel my feet. They felt like they each weight 100 pounds. After standing on a boat for a half hour. We reached our bus across the river and sat down in the warm heat, which couldn't have felt any better. For the next three hours, while they played another movie that took place in Venice, I fell asleep to my music. When we arrived back in Florence, I went to my room, checked my email and went straight to bed because I was exhausted and I had class in the morning. For my first field trip, it was a lot of fun, but very cold. I can't wait to see what my other trips with school and on my own are like!