Travel Adventures: Venezia

This past weekend I went to Venice for Carnevale! It was complete madness!!! It was seriously crazy with how many people were there, dressed up and wearing creepy masks! Well my adventure started on Thursday night we got on a train at 7 p.m. in Viterbo and went to a train station in Chiesi or something like that and had to wait for 3 hours for the next train! So we finally boarded the night train at midnight and got to Venice at 5:30 in the morning! Almost the whole USAC group went to Venice this weekend and there was a few of us on the train, so we all walked around together for like 3 hours because no one could check into their hotels yet. So we found San Marco's Square and watched the sunrise over the water! It was so beautiful even though I did not want to be up that early carrying all my luggage around!! So we couldn't even call our hotel until 8:30 and that was just to ask them when we could check in, which we couldn't check in until noon! So we shopped a little on San Marco's square I bought my mask which is blue and silver and has blue feathers on the top of it! I look ridiculous in it! So then we were all hungry and decided to go eat somewhere, we just went to the first place we saw which was way to close to San Marco's because the food was nasty and expensive! So after that we were like tonight we are grocery shopping! After the horrible lunch we checked into our hotel took a much needed nap and then went to Ipercoop which is the big grocery store in Italy! Luckily we had a fridge in our room, so we could get cheese and salame and stuff like that! It saved a lot of money and time! The next day we decided to go to the island of Murano, which is where they make blown glass! We got to see a free demonstration of a guy making it and he made a little horse statue in like 10 minutes! It was crazy! So I ended up buying some souveneirs off that island! It was so cute and quiet I loved it there! Well then we went back to the island of Venice and me, Cassie, and Rachal went shopping at San Marco's and went inside the church there! The church was gorgeous! It had gold ceilings! No joke! So this time in San Marco's it was jam packed full of people and there were a lot of people dressed up in full out dresses and old fashioned type of clothing wearing masks! Not gonna lie it was kind of creepy! All you could see was there eyes moving back and forth because the masks covered everything else!! Well after that we went back to our place and had lunch and then decided to go on a gondola ride! The limit is 6 people on the gondola which was perfect, it was the 3 AZ girls with the 3 Iowa girls! So we went on it and got to see the fire station which they have fire boats instead of trucks, then we saw casanova's house, Napoleon's house, the Ponte Rialto which is the bridge over the Grand Canal! Everything is so beautiful there! That night we weren't really sure what was going on so we walked around San Marco's for a while and then decided to head back around 10! We got up the next day to catch our train at 11:45 and got back to Viterbo at like 7:30! My parents called me late again and I got to talk to my dad for the second week in a row! I love getting to talk to both of my parents! And I also got to talk to my sister Amy as well!