Carnevale in Venice

Venice is pretty nice, and by nice I mean, "hauntingly beautiful like the first 5 bars of a Taylor Swift song."

We got into Venice on Saturday night, and spent all of Sunday exploring the city. It was actually a perfect amount of time to spend wandering around the area since Venice is a lot smaller than you think. We left pretty satisfied that we had seen everything (except for the Peggy Guggenheim gallery, I'm still a little bitter but I'll be back I'm sure). I definitely learned that LOCATION is very, very important to consider when booking a hostel. The place we were staying was a 20 minute train ride to the island, in a not-so-nice-area that was completely deserted around nighttime. When booking hostels in the future, I suggest you do tons of research on how close you're staying near all the main attractions because a good location can save you some unneeded stress and money on transportation costs.

We headed into the city on Saturday night for some reveling and realized how confusing Venice was to navigate, especially for those that are directionally impaired (and no I'm not just talking about in life) and for those of us that don't speak Italian. There are loads of twisty-turny streets that don't go where want them to, but we made it out eventually! Basically, there are HUUUGE darties for Carnevale, which is a celebration leading up to Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday (Lent). However, the parties are only fun if you can find them.... Luckily, we actually stumbled upon some happenings in the city and spent a great night drinking 2 euro Heinekans and exploring the squares of Venice. If you're looking for a club/bar scene though, I wouldn't pick Venice as my number one choice for a city. It's just a cool place to explore with lots of culture and history built into its foundation, literally, and all the bars close around 1 am. If it wasn't Carnevale season, this would be one of those places "you spend all day wandering aimlessly, and then come home at night to pass out in your room."

The next day we decided to get up early and explore the whole city. Venice is gorgeous. There's so much festivity in the air, and everyone there just looks happy to be alive. Our first stop was at a mask stand to blend in with the rest of the party. There are so many beautiful creations, and a lot of them are hand-painted and manufactured right there in the city! If you're searching for an authentic Venetian mask, however, you do have to be careful about which place you're buying it from. A lot of mask stands in the city are selling goods in that are made in China, so you have to make sure you're not dropping 50+ euros on something that's not authentic.

So many masks to choose from but I picked one out for only 3 euros that was super colorful (I was wearing all black).

As we made our way to St. Marks Square, we passed a gondola and decided to take a ride. It was a cool way to see the city because you don't realize how connected everything until you take a closer look from the waterways. Our gondola guy was amazing. I think he had more muscle in one of his biceps than I will in my entire life. This is what Italians do instead of lift. They row gondolas.

Hi from Mauricio and I on our gondola.

During Carnavale, St. Marks Square comes alive. People everywhere are dressed up in crazy costumes and it's basically their version of Halloween. We saw a few Shreks and Assassins Creed characters, but for the most part, people had wigs and crazy dresses from the Renissance.

Exhibit A.

They're all dressed up and posed so that you can go up to them and take photos. You could really tell that they put in a ton of effort to make their costumes great. It's like a mixer, the more you get into it, the better it becomes, and Venice definitely puts in 110% percent.

However, my favorite part of the square was the Doge Palace. Much tall, many white. It used to be the residence of the "Doge of Venice", which actually isn't a royal dog, but the Supreme Authority of the Republic of Venice. My doge felt honored to be here.

It was a perfect day, and I'm so happy I got to see the beautiful city that is Venice.

And eat amazing gelato (Boutique del Gelato is the best in the city).

And amazing pasta (shoutout to Kevin Bischoff for telling me about Dal Moro's bc I'm in love).

#venice #gondola #italy