Carnival in Venice

After a week of skiing, we headed to Venice to enjoy carnival.  We had originally planned on staying for three days, but decided we had enough after two days.  Venice is not like any other city in the world, because instead of roads there are canals.  Instead of buses or street cars used for public transportation Venetians use boats and it was interesting to watch them getting around their city in this way.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting Murano an island located ten minutes by boat from the main island of Venice.  Murano is known around the world for it's glass blowing.  We were able to enjoy a glass blowing demonstration.  After the glass is taken out of the oven the glass blowers have less than one minute to design the figure before the glass cools off and it becomes to difficult to shape.  We saw them making a Ferrari horse and a vase. There are two types of glass, solid glass and blown glass. The Ferrari horse was solid glass because there was no air inside, and the horse didn't need to be blown. The vase however was blown glass because the hollow part inside needed to be blown. 

We couldn't leave Venice without taking a gonolda ride through the canals.  Even though the high was only five degrees, we managed to take one just before we left Monday morning. We learned from the Gondolier that Venice is made up of 120 individual pieces of land, or islands, connected by 400 bridges. He took us on the Grande Canal, the long central canal that forms a big "S" through the center of Venice.  We went under the Ponte Rialto, the biggest bridge in Venice that was built 420 years ago. The bridge was crowded with lots of tourists taking pictures of the Grande Canal that flows below it.

The Venetian Carnival began as a time for celebrating and interacting among the social classes. Masks were worn to hide any form of identity between the classes.  During the 1970s, the Italian government decided to reintroduce carnival as a way to celebrate the city's history and culture.  Traditionally, people were allowed to wear masks between the festival of Santo Stefano until the end of carnival on Shrove Tuesday.  Surprisingly, there were not many carnival events and we spent our two days walking around Venice, stopping to look at the lovely masks in the windows of stores or posing for pictures with people that were all dressed up and disguised.  Maddy and I felt left out because we didn't have any costumes but mom promised we would get a mask. And sure enough, we did.

The most well known masks worn throughout Carnival are the Bauta, the Moretta and the Volto. The Volto was the most common mask worn in Venice for many years. The Moretta is made of black velvet and is oval in shape and was traditionally worn by women visiting convents. The Bauta is a mask that covers the whole face with a chin line, no mouth, and lots of gilding.  However, some Bautas cover only the upper part of the face from the forehead down to the nose and upper cheeks. These types of Bautas were made so that the wearer could talk and eat easier. Mom, Maddy and I all got a Bauta because we wanted something that was just covering our upper face. The full mask was to heavy and I could hardly breathe when I tried it on.

Having studied Romeo and Juliette in grade two, Maddy really wanted to go see Juliette's balcony in Verona, so on the way home from Venice we stopped in Verona to have a look. To me, it just looked like any other ordinary balcony, but if it made Maddy happy than I guess it was worth it. Maddy and I went in the house and stood on the balcony. Then we got back in the car and made our way back to Nice.


Simona