Venice Carnevale

This weekend we went to Venice for the famous Carnevale.  It originally started in 1162 when the Republic of Venice defeated Ulrico and since then its been a tradition to celebrate their victory.  A huge part of carnivale is dressing up and wearing masks.  Italians began to wear the masks so everyone could celebrate and not know which class people were in.

We went on this trip through our school and left early saturday morning.  We got there around 10 and had to take a ferry to get to the island of Venice. We started out on Santa Marco which is the center of the city celebration.  We all had no clue how crowded it was actually going to be.  The city center was literally stuffed with people. We then began our tour with our group, but it was so crowded and so loud that mostly everyone left the tour and explored Venice on our own.  They recommended for us to get lost, and thats exactly what we did.  We saw so many elaborate costumes, and the people wearing them took it so seriously.  They would walk around and pose for pictures, act like they were really important and just walk away.  The drink of the carnival is the bellini and we enjoyed a lot of those with the fellow Italians.  We stayed on the island all day even though our hotel was off the island.  We stayed for the night time celebration which was basically thousands of Italians dancing to the YMCA, fill me up buttercup, and respect on repeat.

Today we understood the ferry system a little better and got to Venice much quicker (no cars are allowed on all of Venice).  Once there it seemed like the crowds had multiplied over night.  Me, Tiff and 4 of our other friends were trying to walk to our glass blowing tour but the streets were completely packed.  we stood at a standstill for about 15 minutes around over a thousand people with no clue what to do.  The police were blocking us off from Santo Marco (the main Carnevale Plaza) because it was over capacity.  We then started getting pushed into the police officers from the massive crowd behind us.  The police officers were holding us back and making us into an American sandwhich.  We started freaking out that we were about to be trampled  so we ended up having to push under the policemen.  Once past the blockade we were still stuck in a crowd and freaking out that a riot was about to break out, so we pushed our way into a jewelry store.  We ended up staying in the jewelry store for an hour and a half before the crowd would move.  The owner wanted to kick us and the other people out that were trying to wait in the store so we all ended up buying things so we could stay in there.  It was an a super scary experience, but once the crowd somewhat cleared our guide came and met us and took us to lunch.  Because of the crowd fiasco we never got to see the famous Venetian glass because we decided a gondola ride was more important in our limited time.  Gondola rides are actually super expensive 80 euros during the day, and 100 and up at night.  We split it among the 6 of us so it wasn't bad, it just sucked that it was raining.  The man rowing the gondola told us that he sees proposals at least once every 2 weeks.

Since Carnivale is a two week long celebration that is now celebrated throughout Italy, we will experience round 2 next weekend in Roma!

on the ferry to Venice

a UPS boat

entering Venice

Santo Marco

People dressed up

Santo Marco packed on the first day

Us in our masks

Realto Bridge

Couples dressed up

Tiff on a bridge

People dressed as clowns kayaking

the theatre in Santo Marco

Night time celebration

The view of the crowd from the standstill crowd from the jewelry store

Hannah, Lauren, and Tiff before the gondola

on the gondola

The famous Bridge of Sighs, under a lot of construction

Fiesole

Yesterday a bunch of us decided to walk to Fiesole which is a small town on top of a very high hill outside of Florence.  It is on Frommer's top 13 things to do in Florence so we figured we had to conquer it.  The book said you can take a bus there or take the challenge of walking.  We google mapped it and it came out to around 3 1/2 miles so we were up for it.

It ended up being a much harder walk than expected with a steep incline the entire way.  We felt very accomplished once at the top and were expecting to eat dinner on a balcony to see the view.  When we asked one of the shop owners where a place to eat was he said Florence.  We ended up buying a euro bus ticket back  and ate in Florence.

Now were off to Venice for the night to go to the Carnevale!

I forgot my camera so the pictures aren't as good because they're from my phone

 Hiking up to the top

 View of Florence from the top

Country side view

Switzerland!

Switzerland was absolutely amazing, and Tiff and I are both so glad we randomly decided to go.

We went through a program called Bus2Alps which is a Florence based tour guide company for students that goes to about 10 different destinations in Europe.  We left by bus at around 11:30 Thursday night and headed to Interlaken, Switzerland.  The bus ride sucked but was worth it because we went directly to the hostel when we got there.  We got there at about 7:30 am and headed to the Outdoor Interlaken adventure company where we picked our activities.  There, they offered skiing, canyon jumping, paragliding, night sledding, and a bunch of other crazy activities.  I was able to rent everything I needed to go skiing, including clothes which was very convenient.  I also got much nicer skis and boots than I would ever get in the states.

In the office I met sisters from New Jersey who were also going skiing and wanted to get a guide.  The three of us split a private guided tour of the mountain since it was so massive and we had no clue how to get there.  We met up with our guide and then took a bus and two different trains to get to the top of the alps.  Its an hour and fifteen minutes of travel time just to get to the top!

We skied the Jungfrau region of Switzerland, and within that there are many different sections to ski.  Our guide was able to take us to 4 of those different mini regions.  At the top of the alps there is no way to picture or capture how massive these mountains are.

It was so beautiful and I am so glad that I got the oppurtunity to ski.  The girls I was with were right about the same skiing level which was also really lucky.  One of the sisters actually ended up falling and getting a concussion which turned into a big fiasco and hospital trip.  She ended up being fine and went night sledding the next day.

The trip was also really fun because they cater to college students. Our trip advisors are American college grads who are taking the year off to live abroad and work for these travel companies.  They would try out all the different activities with us and then take us to the fun bars at night.

It was shocking how clean Switzerland is, and how impossible it is to understand or even attempt to speak German.  I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the Swiss and their attitudes towards Americans.  Some were super nice and some were assholes.  My ski guide was super nice and taught us that the Swiss speak German in school and in professional settings, but in each region they speak their own dialect of Swiss, and everyone also knows how to speak French and English.  I really felt dumb when everyone I meet speaks 5 languages and I keep saying "grazie" instead of "danke" to the Swiss.

We got to meet a bunch of really coll Americans doing the Bus2Alps program from Florence, Rome, and Barcelona.  Were definitely going to do another trip through them!

Here is a map of the area I skiied http://www.alpineskimaps.com/swit/jungfrau/mapwin.htm

me, Dawn, and Danielle taking the first train to the top of Jungfrau

Where the Wengen races are held

top of the alps

 The cliffs behind me are famous for a lot of people dying when trying to climb them, and not being able to be rescued by helicopter because of the wind

 

in the famous tipi lodge at the top of Jungfrau

With our ski guide

At the bar downstairs from our hostel

The town of Interlaken