Il Carnevale

Il Carnevale is a celebration held every year in Venice where everyone dresses up and wears masks. The celebration starts around two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. Carnevale originally celebrated a time where social classes could be forgotten and anyone could associate with anyone because the masks provided anonymity.

A beautiful, sunny day in Venice!

We decided to participate in this celebration and visited Venice one Saturday during Carnevale. We didn't wear masks, but nonetheless, it was a crazy time! First of all, the train to Venice was packed! We had to stand up the whole time and next to a large group of drunk people for the majority of the time. But we had fun once we got to Venice. There were so many people in Venice and most of them were wearing the most extravagant costumes. We just walked around and looked at all of the amazing costumes, ate some delicious pizza, and then finished off the day with some gelato. It was funny because there were so many people who were dressed up just so people could take pictures of them. Some of them just stood in one place while people just took pictures of them. It was kind of weird. I don't know, that just doesn't seem like something that would be fun for me, but so many people lived for it! They must not get very much attention, so this is their time to shine! haha.

Here are some pictures of the festival. We were between cameras at the time (Dallin sold his camera and we were waiting for our upgrade to be sent to us) so these pictures are not the best, as they were taken with my point-and-shoot camera.

There were so many people there.

Authentic Venetian masks.

There were many groups of people like this, just riding along in gondolas playing music.

The Rialto Bridge

Tall Dallin with the the tall Campanile.

Attention seekers.

Scary tall guy

Specchio Magico, or the Magic Mirror!

Creepy cat people.

Ladies

Gelati!