Sunday February 15, 2009

We started the day with a breakfast a t the hotel. By breakfast I mean a large assortment of sweet carbs and espresso. I had never tried espresso before on its own so I went ahead and decided to give it a try. Two espresso’s later I became an addict…it’s much more efficient than coffee! Probably a good thing I don’t know how to use the espresso maker in our apartment. We departed the hotel at 7:30am and boarded our ferry to Venice at 8am. Arriving in Venice so early was nice because we could actually see the city since it wasn’t packed with people yet. To start our day we toured the Peggy Guggenheim contemporary art museum. We had a great tour guide from California who was in Venice working on her PHD. The museum houses about 250 pieces of art with 50 pieces classified as “masterpieces” which is an amazing concentration for such a small museum.


The tour ended just in time for us to rush back to Piazza San Marco for the decent of the angel ceremony indicating the official start of the Carnivale. The Piazza was so crowded we could barely even fit in around the perimeter. For the ceremony an Italian celebrity dressed as an angel descends slowly from the top of the bell tower on a zip line to the tune of Hallelujah. The combination of a massive crowd and adrenaline pumping music made it a very impressive sight. After the ceremony we tried to leave the Piazza but ended up getting caught up in crowds for over an hour only to end up where we started. We finally were able to escape in search of food but of course every pizzeria, osteria, trattoria, ristorante, etc. was jamb packed with visitors. Finally, we ended up at a “self-service” spot where I had surprisingly delicious eggplant parmesan and a side salad.

After lunch we took our time roaming the streets in search of our Carnivale masks. We had been looking for our perfect masks since the day before once we noticed how many people were wearing them. We had to fit in! At a shop down the street from our restaurant we picked out the ones we wanted. I was in search of one with peacock feathers but a friendly salesman informed me this trend was sooo two years ago. Instead, I chose a pretty silver and emerald mask with ostrich feathers. Afterwards, we splurged on some wonderful pistachio gelato…I think we got a little too much into the “vacation” spirit.

We boarded our final ferry back to the mainland as the sun was beginning to set. From there we boarded our bus, battled Carnivale traffic, and arrived back in Florence, exhausted, at 11pm. This trip couldn’t have gone any better!