Carnevale di Venezia

This morning Dan and I hopped on the train and went to Venice.  Carnevale is annual festival and starts 2 weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Fat Tuesday.  From researching online, carnevale “was a time for celebration and expressions throughout the classes, as wearing masks hid any form of identity between social classes.” 

We couldn’t believe how packed the train station was when we got off the train. We knew it was going to be crowded, but it literally took us a good 10 minutes just to get out of the train station. We looked at the program online and knew we wanted to head to San Marco Square to see The Flight of the Angel. I guess that’s what everyone wanted to see because after fighting our way through massive crowds and stand stills…when we finally got to the last hallway to enter the square, there were policemen standing there not letting anyone in.  We tried another way, same thing, they were telling people to turn around. Here are a few pictures of how crowded things looked.

This picture was coming out of the train station…one of the least packed areas of the day.

Walking through the streets of Venice. This area wasn’t as bad either, at least we were moving at this point.

Yes, at some points we were stopped, people touching you from all directions, it was insane. Not to mention the elbows and shoving and people stopping right in the middle of the way…I wasn’t too happy at this point. LOL.  I don’t like being in large crowds with rude people, but regardless as to where you are…you have a large crowd, it’s going to be like this.  Once we got to the close to the square and they made us turn around, we went through some back ways to avoid the crowded areas.  This is when we took the time to start taking pictures of the costumes because it wasn’t so crowded and we had some personal space.  The costumes were amazing, there were many that we saw that we didn’t get pictures of, but here are some pictures of the ones we did get.

Oh, I forgot to mention. While we were at stand stills in crowds, people were also throwing confetti everywhere. This was awesome, people were so happy doing it, it was fun to see. Everywhere we walked, the streets looked like this.

This car freshener guy stopped to pose when he saw me taking a picture. His buddies are in the background checking out their reflections in the glass.

Everyone was staring and laughing at these two when they went by. They were handcuffed together with a heart hanging from the chain. They also have heart shaped wings.

Many people had these afro wigs on. This one was about 4 times bigger than all the other ones we saw.

The people watching was definitely the most interesting part of this trip.  It’s still going on through next weekend, so if we want to go again, we will hang out on this shopping strip, avoid the crowds and just get pictures of the people in costumes.  On the way back to the train station there was a woman with a few of her paintings set up.  We really like one, so we got it. It’s our first purchased piece of artwork here, so I’m pretty excited about it. We have to get it framed and all, but here is a picture of it. It’s an oil painting.

Some friends of ours here have some amazing paintings that they bought in Venice, I LOVE them. I need to find that guy and buy some.  He doesn’t have a store, he just sits in a spot on the street. Hopefully it’s the same spot as where our friends bought their paintings so we can find him. After Carnevale, we will have to go search for him.  I also want to go to the islands around Venice too, haven’t done that yet.  It’s a good thing we still have 2 years left here. 

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.