This past weekend I was lucky enough to visit Venice for Carnivale! This was my first time visiting Venice and going during Carnivale had its pros and cons but all in all it was an amazing trip. As many of you may know, Venice is packed during Carnivale, with people visiting from all over the world to dress up in masks and period costumes with capes and hairstyles to rival those of Marie-Antoinette. My Italian teacher said the city looks like an opera stage during Carnivale—a description which turned out to be very apt. We arrived Friday morning after a train ride through the beautiful Italian country-side, past mountains, and lakes, until we crossed the bridge to Venice. Since I was little the idea of this city on the sea, with streets like small rivers, has intrigued me. As I grew older, seeing paintings by Turner and learning of the city’s rich and risqué history only increased my interest.
The three days we had there were simply not enough. The streets were the most narrow I have ever seen, some covered with wood beams, some tall with tilting buildings looming on either side. We got lost almost every time we left our hotel. In my Literature of the Grand Tour class we read an excerpt from Goethe’s travel accounts in Italy, and even he, so many years ago, remarked on the narrow, maze-like quality of the streets. It is brilliant to see that it is still the same.
At night the streets were wonderfully empty as well and it felt like a fairytale. The utter lack of cars on the street, paired with the 19th century looking street lamps made the city look even more like a portal to the past.
I am far from the first, and certainly not the last person to be so ridiculously charmed by Venice but it is nice to know that even when a city is an inundated with tourism as Venice is, it can still retain its charm.
Aside from the beautiful architecture (I could wax poetic for hours but I’ll spare you) we also had some of the most amazing seafood there. We also took a break from the revelry and pageantry of the first days of Carnivale to take a quick trip to Murano, one of the nearby islands. While Venice was only empty at night, Murano was nearly deserted during the day. The island, which is known for its glass, was like a smaller, less grand and less tourist filled version of Venice. As we walked down the street a party of old men and women thrust wine and frittelle on us and threw confetti over our heads before sending us on our way. We went to a glass blowing demonstration and the artist let us have a go as well (I failed miserably, as did one of my friends). We had amazing food and the waiters gave us two free rounds of Limoncello.
At the end of the day we took a sun-drenched ferry ride back to Venice, which was packed to the brim with tourists for the Carnivale parade, but even the crowds couldn’t shake the blanket of calm our day-trip had brought to the holiday.
In other words it was the perfect antithesis to the dark, mysterious streets of Venice, but equally lovely and beautiful. It was all so wonderful though, I really could go on about it forever—and I’m lucky enough to be returning with my mother in May—but I will spare you all. What this trip has reminded me of though, is how lucky I am to be studying here, and to have the opportunity to travel around Italy, and how diverse the history and architecture is here. It was wonderful to see something that was so different.