Farewell, Meat! Carnevale 2010- Day 1

Gosh, you guys sure get antsy when I don't post... I guess it's a sign of love! <3

Speaking of love, last weekend was Valentine's and I WENT TO VENICE! (You see that flawless transition???)

Words. Cannot. Describe. It.

We left thursday night at 10:30, which was our first mistake. If you ever are in Italy, never, under any circumstances, take the night train. Out of my entire trip, being sick, hurting my foot, and the cold showers, the night train is still the worst experience I've ever had. Normally, I'm able to just pass out and sleep the entire time. Nope. Didn't happen. I think I got about 2 hours and then we pulled into Venice at 5:45 am. Oh, and we couldn't check into our hostel until 9. My first impression was, boy, Venice is cold! A normal person would have looked at a map and realized, hey, Venice is in northern Italy and is surrounded by water. Nope. Not this girl. 

We we able, thankfully, to drop off our bags at the hostel and then just wandered the streets of Venice. It was so weird. At first, our only priority was to get warm and hopefully sit down, but nothing was open so on we went. By this time, it was 6:30 and the sun was beginning to peak out so we wanted to find a place to watch the sunrise, something I have yet to do in Italy...

After some more wandering and my sad attempts at asking for directions, we somehow found San Marco's. If you get the chance to go to Venice, take it if for no other reason to go to San Marco's. St Mark is the patron saint of Venice and is buried in the church that bears his name. As huge and impressive as the church is, the views are even better.

I feel like I should do a little backtracking. This weekend was the end of Carnevale, a 12 (?) day party/ festival celebrating the start of Lent. Traditionally, it was when everyone would eat all the meat they had, thus "Carne" ("meat") "Vale" ("go away"). It was expanded into a huge 2 week long party where people from all over the world come to party and show off the most extravagant costumes I've ever seen. Think Halloween on steroids mixed with Phantom of the Opera.

It turns out that the best dressed come out to San Marco's to have their pictures professionally done at sunrise for magazines, ads, TV... Guess who happened to be there at the same time??? THIS GIRL!!! I got SO many incredible pics that Halloween will be a huge letdown this year.

We checked into our apartments. Yes, that's right: plural. I traveled with 7 other girls; 10 if you count the girls we met up with. We were given the first floor of a building that has 3 separate apartments. Apartment is the wrong word. Penthouse is more like it. Please refer to the picture. That is just my and one other girl's bed.

We took a well-deserved nap, had lunch at a pizzeria right outside our apartment, and, being the girls we are, immediately started our searches for the perfect masks. I decided on a subtle purple and gold mask, with jewels, edging, and huge feathers. I love that mask... We all met back at made pasta for dinner and totally ate family style. We got ready and went out to celebrate one girl's 21st bday!!! We heard of some stuff going on at San Marcos, but it turned out to be kind of a bust. We went back to the apartments to change and stumbled upon a huge party in a piazza near us. We met up with some more JFRC kids, but nothing much happened and we were back home by 1:45.