:: Italy '09, Day 2-3 ::

[Jess and I went to Italy in Feb: Day 0 here (flight); Day 1 here (Rome)]

Friday and Saturday of our Italy trip found us in the most amazing city I've ever experienced: Venice! Truly an incredible feat of architecture, if you've never been it looks like age-old buildings just shoot up out of the water. Because, well, they do.

After arriving from our 6:50am train, we got settled and spent the morning on Taxi #1, which travels the entire Grand Canal, passing astounding scenes and ending at St. Mark's Square. Friday afternoon we took a boat tour to three of Venice's lesser-known islands, Murano (famous for its glass-blowing, of which we viewed a demonstration), Burano (famous for its lace and colored houses), and Torcello (famous for its... uh... cool old church and stone chair maybe?).

I should probably mention that while we were there during the annual festival of Carnivale, the celebration just before Ash Wednesday and Lent begin. Think of it as Venice's version of Mardi Gras - except the only rowdy drunks were the masses of American college students. Kind of like Mardi Gras. So there were literally 1000's of people there from all over the world, and instead of beads, people dressed up. Like, really dressed up. In head-to-toe masks, paint, animal or medieval costumes. So the entire city was like a huge masquerade celebration... pretty cool! (Because of the vast amount of 'em, I'll devote a whole post to Carnivale costume pics tomorrow, so check back then!)

We spent the evening enjoying the festivities of Carnivale, including people-watching, an acrobat attached to the glowing orb above, the dancing human-plant, stage plays, and more. We slept well Friday, then wandered through the Venetian markets and St. Mark's on Saturday.

We had heard not-so-good things about Venice: the smell of rotting fish, the heat, and that there wasn't really much to do. We found no truth in any of that. Timing must truly be everything... If you go to Venice, we highly recommend going during the chilly, but highly entertaining season of Carnivale in February.

Anyway, Saturday afternoon we boarded a train to stop #3, Florence. But enough text. Hopefully the paragraph aboves explain a few of the stunning scenes below - Enjoy!