Carnevale in Venice!!

I'm back from Venice for Carnevale! Venice was absolutely beautiful and SO different than every city we have visited so far. The city of Venice is surrounded by water and has little canals flowing all throughout it. There were many bridges that we had to cross to get through the city to different piazzas. The major piazza in Venice is San Marco and that is where the big Carnevale celebrations were held. When we first got to Venice we walked across a huge bridge and after about 5 minutes or less we were at our hotel. It was really small but really cute and clean. Lucky for us, our friends randomly booked the same hotel as we did so we could easily meet up with them! We got there a day later than they did so we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and then spent the rest of the afternoon adventuring. We stopped by a "snack bar" and I got the worst margherita pizza I've ever had but I was so hungry that I ate it anyway. Venice is really convenient because they have large signs painted on the sides of the buildings pointing you to San Marco Piazza; we didn't even need to use a map! On the way to the Piazza they had tons of little shops with gorgeous masks everywhere. I stopped a little cart and bought a pink and gold mask that I absolutely loved. As you get closer to the Piazza, there are bigger, nicer stores like Benetton and Louis Vuitton. A lot of tourists were wearing masks like us but some were dressed in costumes like it was Halloween. The Venetians were wearing costumes but they were usually extremely elaborate and Renaissance like. All of them wear full-face masks and will stand there posing for pictures for SO long. We saw so many amazing costumes. We got to the Piazza and thats where we saw most of the people in their costumes. By that time it was near dinner time so we walked around and found a cute little place and I got some tortellini. We walked back to our hotel to meet our friends and on our way we found a lovely little shop with the cheapest Bellini in town! Bellini is a drink that is made of prosecco (Italian champagne) and peach puree, it's beyond delicious! We met our friends at the hotel (they were right down the hall!) and we got ready to go out! The hotel told us we should go to Piazza Margherita because "thats where the young people go". That was enough for us and after getting a tad lost and asking for directions we found a large Piazza with about 4 or 5 bars. We randomly picked one and it turned out to be a great idea. We walked in and were warmly greeted. The bartender insisted on giving us free shots but some American girls at the end of the bar heard and were complaining that they wanted free shots and we were thinking, they better shut it or we are going to lose our free shots! Thankfully the bartender said no no, its her birthday and pointed at me and gave me the eye to play along so of course I shouted ya its my birthday!! The girls were like, wait, whose birthday is it? And I answered, it's mine! They got all excited and asked how old I was turning and I was like uh oh...I can't say 21 because they would go crazy so I told them I was turning 22. They were satisfied and we found out they were studying abroad in a city about an hour from Orvieto and were from a school in Oklahoma. This guy in their group even bought me a birthday shot! (I felt a little bad but I mean, my half birthday is in a couple days anyway...I figure that counts.) We bought one shot that looked just like an Italian flag called Sex in Italy. We all agreed that it must be a close second to the real thing. The bar was really cool because there were little signs everywhere with the names of colleges on them from all of the students who have visited it. There was already a U of A one but we decided to make a new one from us anyway! Also, one of the Oklahoma girls was a Tri Delta!! We were freaking out, took pictures...we were fast friends. After a satisfying evening we trekked back to our hotel and slept. We had our free hotel breakfast, complete with cappuccino and went off exploring again. There was a lot of people on Friday but Saturday was INSANE. We were shoving past people all day long, it was exhausting. We walked around with our friends in the morning/afternoon around the Piazza and by the water where there were more gondolas and people in costumes. We sat down for a little bit by the water and I ALMOST DIED. I walked to the step and figured I would step down a one more step so someone could sit behind me and BAM I slipped on moss and almost went sailing into the water. Thankfully my friend and a random good Samaritan grabbed me and I survived. We got a good laugh out of that one. Eventually our friends needed to catch their train so they walked back and we went shopping. It was very successful. I bought a new pair of boots (my other boots are looking really ghetto by now), some mint-green shorts and some Milan brand make-up (no big deal). Anna and I bought a mini bellini and some pizza and ate dinner and then went back to the Piazza to watch a show they had going on. After the show we went to where the Bellini was first made at Harry's Bar but they wanted an arm and a leg for one so we just got a picture in front instead. We were extremely tired by that point and went home. Anna passed out and I stayed up watching Ice Age in Italian. We know we're lame but you have no idea how exhausting walking around is, plus Venice isn't really a night time hot spot...the day time is the best time to go. The next morning we were leaving so we walked over to near the train station and found a place right on the water to eat lunch! It was very peaceful and the weather was gorgeous out. Then we took our 5 hour train ride back to Orvieto and were stuck studying for midterms. Midterms shouldn't exist for students studying abroad.