Carnivale in Venice. Oh what a 36 hours....

Thursday a group of us stayed in and watched "Something About Mary," down in Rinaldos while we snacked and hung out. Lauren and I ended up sleeping in until 4 o'clock. I had gotten up and eaten lunch and was awake for about an hour and a half, but went back to sleep. Our only excuse is that we hadn't gone to bed until 4 am, so 12 hours of sleep isn't so long. Anyways, we were awoken to everyone drinking and celebrating St. Sauters Day. This is the last name of Mark, a friend of ours here. They were throwing a huge party in their room in celebration of his name for absolutely no reason. It was actually really fun and entertaining, it was a beautiful day so everyone was outside enjoying the weather and good Italian beer. We eventually all went to dinner without about 25 people at one table, all at least a little tipsy where there were prayers and cheers to Mark for his holy day. It was hilarious.

In the meantime, we had convinced 3 of these guys to come with us to Venice for the weekend. Joe, Mark, and Matt all drunkenly decided to join our excursion. Our group consisted of 8 people; Nika, Nick, Kaela, Molly Keifer (a girl from the twin cities as well), Mark, Joe, Matt, and I. It was actually a wonderful group size and functioned well for the entire weekend--well almost, but I'll get to that later. We were to catch the train at 10:30 pm and arrive in Venice at 5:30 am. Somehow we figured this would be a fabulous idea and could manage on little sleep to party for 24 hours in Venice for Carnivale. We hardly made it to the train station, but we did it with very little time to spare. Got on and managed to get a car to ourselves and stayed up and drank for a while longer. We got into a few political conversations which were actually quite enlightening. We learned a lot about eachother after a few screaming fits at one another. Mark is actually incredibly intelligent and surpassed our expectations of what we had known of him previously.

I just want to say here, upon our return when asked how our trip went, we were at a loss for words. This trip was literally indescribable. So much fun and chaos, there are literally no words to even begin to explain this day. But this will be my attempt to show you what a wreckless/wonderful 36 hour excursion it was.

We all got some sleep on the train until we were abruptly awoken by some man telling us we had to switch cars because they were leaving the one we were on behind. We were all so frazzled we just couldn't stop laughing, in disbelief we had taken this adventure upon ourselves. The boys we had convinced to come along said and I quote "Where are we?? We just got drunk and got on a train??" It was hilarious, because they had no previous intentions of coming along, but somehow had drunkenly managed to end up on this (what at the time seemed like horrific) journey.

Within 15 minutes we had arrived in the dark and unbearably cold city of Venice. We were at a loss for words. There were no public bathrooms, and absolutely nothing was open at 5:30 in the morning. So in utter helplessness we set up camp, in fact named it "Camp David" and huddled in a corner together. We all laid in, around, and on top of eachother cuddling trying to keep warm. We stayed there for a good hour until the buffet in the train station opened. I was too tired to even think about food. Once the sun finally started to rise we saw that the water front was right outside of the station. It was already beautiful. We waited around for the right taxi to bring us to Piazza di San Marco and we were all pretty miserable in the process. We finally got onto the cool water taxis that brought us to the main island? We are still unsure exactly how Venice works. We were so unprepared it was unbelievable. We had no maps or itinerary for Venice or Carnivale. Matt had brought nothing warm yet 5 pairs of socks and underwear? Anyways, Nika had already been feeling sick and got serious motion sickness on the boat so once we finally got off, she ended up puking in a near by trash can. That was unpleasant for everyone, but her especially. She felt better afterwards and we walked around to find a little cafe for breakfast since after all it was only 8 am. We got some sandwiches and watched American music videos for another hour and a half or so. Once we had all had time to relax and reenergize by putting food in our stomachs we were motivated to start the day. 9:30 was also a more reasonable time to start functioning for us 21 year olds.

Quick side note: We saw at least 4 "Wishbone" looking dogs throughout the day while in Venice, so it was a running joke and anthem song sung during our Carnivale. "What's the Story Wishbone?!" I honestly don't know if I stopped laughing the entire time I was there, our newly found male friends were a riot and kept our attitudes light hearted and giggly throughout our indescribable day.

We continued on our way, walking on bridges over the canals, seeing gondolas every which way. We decided that we still had time before any events would be going on so 6 of us decided to go for a ride. Nika was still traumatized from the water so she decided to stay back, as well as Molly. The gondola ride was absolutely gorgeous. I felt like royalty traveling through the innards of Venice. We were traveling the streets but the streets were made of water. There were steps from homes and hotels directly into the water. It was just as I had imagined it. I have always loved the concept of Venice and its unique beauty and it met all of my high expectations. Property there is ridiculously expensive which is to be expected, but our "driver" (of the gondola) told us that for roughly 700 square feet its about 350,000 euros which is about $500,000 American dollars. For such little space! It's insane. But if someday I become rich enough I would love to have a vacation home there, maybe a gondola as well. What a fantasy. When we got back Molly and Nika had found the main piazza so we ventured there where I bought my mask. I was the only one who purchased a mask but it was so worth it. Green and originally painted in Venice Italy, with feathers, glitter, and a jewel to hold the feathers in place. Molly eventually got her face painted but I will keep this mask for the rest of my life. Carnivale in Venice 2009. So amazing. Anyways, we wandered around San Marco and saw all the costumes, took a million pictures with them and of them. Then snuck into the church, again probably one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. It was COVERED in gold. Domes all over the church filled with gold mosaics.

After we continued to walk around the city discovering little piazza's and beautiful winding streets and bridges. We eventually bought some alcohol, and claimed a bridge near Piazza di San Marco. We sat there for a couple hours drinking and singing our hearts out. I took a nap there for a while since I was on such limited sleep and so did a few others, when we eventually got kicked off of the bridge because we were making too much of a ruckus singing karaoke. We moved to the Piazza where we all continued to relax and drink when all of the sudden a Hari Krishna parade started marching through. Nika, Nick, and I, all independent of one another hopped up and joined the parade, marching through all the streets of Venice chanting the cultish songs of the Hari Krishna religion. It was one of the oddest experiences of my entire life. But people were taking photos and we were super in tune with it for the hour or so that we marched. We thought we had been enlightened and touched by the spirits of these people, but soon after realized what nuts we were. Don't get me wrong, it was an incredible experience but outrageously strange none the less.

Once we finally made it back to San Marco the ceremony had started. Odd music was playing and there was a large white ball floating through the air. A woman was doing some sort of trapeze acrobatic nonsense as well floating and dancing through the air to the slightly creepy music. I was ecstatic by this I guess so I ran ahead to take pictures (even though I had left my battery behind charging at the JFRC... SO disappointing). This incident left me alone for the following two hours. I tried to trace backwards but was unable to do so and didn't find Nika or Nick. So for the proceeding 2 hours I asked every police woman or man I saw "Tren a Roma??" and they would point me in a general direction. I walked with the mobs of people hoping to dear god that I would find my way back to the train station. We had said earlier in the day, if worse comes to worse we will all meet back at the train station for the 8:30 train back to Rome. I literally have no concept of how I made that happen for myself but I got there, bought a ticket and waited hoping to find everyone asap. I waited for a good hour and finally spotted Kaela, Matt, Joe, Mark, and Molly! I was thrilled/turned extremely frantic. I had maintained my sanity until I could be vulnerable and freak out about how terrified I had been in the mass of thousands of people, lost and alone. The terror only lasted about 15 minutes and I was over it. By the time everyone had arrived we had missed the 8:30 train so we had to wait for the 11:56 train. We were all so exhausted we laid back down on the floor of the train station (which was much busier at this hour) and took another brief nap. We ran into some familiar faces who were headed back to the JFRC on our same train, got some food at the buffet again and waited patiently for the train to depart.

Once we finally got on the train 5 out of the 8 of us magically got seats on a train that had been extremely overbooked. Molly, Mark, and Joe were standing in the hallway of the train for a good two hours while we waited and watched people protest outside the train, throwing things at it and screaming. It was a huge riot with cops everywhere trying to constrain the angry tired people who just wanted to go home. Our train was therefore delayed two hours while they waited for an entirely new train to come to put all the extra people on. It was out of this world. Once we finally got moving 2 men came and told us that we were in their "reserved" seats. We explained that we didn't even have reserved seats so there was no way we were moving. The 2 young men then threatened to fight the 8 of us, which just sort of made us all chuckle to ourselves. I sacrificed my seat for one and then 4 squished onto one side. I slept above, you know where the luggage is supposed to be held? Yeah... It was made of approximately 6 metal bars which means that there are roughly 6 bruises on 6 locations of my body. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but I managed. We finally made it back around 9 am, and I crashed until lunch at 1:30. We hung out in Rinaldo's for the rest of the day watching Jurassic Park and eating snacks. That Sunday night was the first night I went to bed before 2 am. Some much needed sleep obviously.

Okkkkkk, I'm finally catching up. Just one more week and Paris which I will have up before Tunisia. I promise! Don't forget to read them in order. Amsterdam/Brussels, Venice, and Paris. Enjoy!

Love always,
Nora Claire.