Venezia!

It's Saturday. Today I attempt to get myself to Carnevale in Venice from Glasgow, in less than 24 hours, utilizing a ride from Lucy and Callum, a Plane, 2 Subway trips, 1 overnight train and a copious amount of walking with a large backpack. Let's hope Carnevale lives up to the hype.

I get up about 10am to discover IT IS SNOWING! Yippee! I have officially seen snow falling only 2 other times in my life (Snow on the ground, yes, falling from the sky, no). I take pictures, as is my new custom in all things.

View out the Kitchen Window, Post Snowfall.

I use this opportunity to get some pictures of other awesome things in Glasgow. Like the Flat.

Lucy and Callum's living room

I spend the morning with Lucy, Callum & Claire, mostly drinking coffee and getting my stuff ready to ship out while they play Guitar Hero. (Guitar Hero, if Lucy and Callum and their friends are any indication, is HUGE in Scotland. Awesome.)

Before I know it, it's time to run away. Lucy and Callum drive me to Glasgow Int'l and just as I am about to enter security, I beg a woman standing nearby to take my only picture with Lucy and Callum.

Me and the Awesomest Glaswegians

Next, there is a Flight to Paris CDG. I sit alone. Then, there is an attempt to get the reservation for the train to Venice. There is much Parlez-vous-Anglaising. Eventually I have my train ticket and a subway pass, and a map to help me with my two subway transfers so I can make my train. Thank God the Paris subway functions similarly to the Tube in London. I meet some lovely French locals on the subway who speak English. When I finally get on the overnight train I am seated in a car with a French Woman and her two young children, another French woman about my age and a young Middle Eastern man, none of whom speak any English! Humbling but awesome. My French output is pitiful but my comprehension, thankfully, is good enough that most of the time I can answer questions correctly though not always fully. My vocab is shot. Stupid me for not borrowing Mary's phrase book. Oh well. This is my first experience with overnight trains and it's pretty surreal, though I do sleep a fair bit of the way.

At last I arrive in Venice at the Santa Lucia Train Station. It is now Sunday morning. It is supposedly a ten minute walk to the Hostel; I have left myself one hour and eighteen minutes between my train arriving in Venice and my Hostel check-in time. After one hour and ten minutes I have found the Hostel. It may be only slightly apparent how easy it is to pass it by but you get the idea.

This is the front door. Not really big on the signage, these people.

The Square Where I Live.

After I am set up at the Hostel I go get lost, wander about happily, stop for lunch and accidentally order a €20 plate of pasta served with half a lobster. Oops. On the upside: the dish is utterly, transcendently delicious.

Next Venetian Mission: Find Best Coffee in Venice. Mission Impossible? Think again.

Done and Done.

After having what is perhaps the best cappuccino of my young life, and feeling the need to make today the day of unabashedly lavish cuisine consumption, I begin the search for appropriately decadent italian dessert. Bingo.

Hey The Table: This is what Profiteroles look like in Venice!

I find tons of other cool stuff too:

For example, I enjoy this door.

I think this is because of it's obvious fury at the fact that it's a door.

I love the buildings. (The word "Teatro" does not bias me in the slightest. Really.)

I love the signage.

And the Carnevalian window displays.

Venice is just absolute coolness everywhere you look.

Cool in the air.

Cool on the ground.

Just generally pretty cool.

I am back at the Hostel in time for the 8:30 Complimentary Family Style Dinner and meet about 6 million people from everywhere. Dinner is a simple pasta but very tasty. After dinner a bunch of folks want to go out partying (about 14 of us) so we wander and bar hop around Venice until we find a club. About 45 minutes from the hostel. Okay, so there were several bars. Whatever.

The club is huge. HUGE. 18 rooms or something. Most of them themed. And the main room has a really good live band. But get this: there is almost no one there. Seriously. Most of the rooms have no people at all. Sunday night Carnevale in Venice seems to be not such a big deal. Huh. However, one of the rooms, equipped with a strobe light and really loud euro-trance-techno-whatever-the-hell music ALSO has, displayed all around the room, multi-language descriptions of about eighteen traditional Commedia Dell'arte characters. Oh the sweet sweetness. Naturally I ignore the environment and walk around the room reading. I really do dig me some geeky Commedia. Though in strobe lighting not so much. I feel slightly nauseous by the time I am done but I don't care.

The Club closes about 1am so we all begin the nearly one hour walk back to the hostel. They have left the clean sheets for my mattress folded on the bed. But they are still wet! Oh buggery. I thank God (but mostly Mary) for Mary's loan of the purple-pillowcase-as-big-as-Becca. I wriggle into it and am immediately asleep.

Coming Soon: Carnevale Masks...God give me strength.

Notes: Cambra, Sex in the City, Italian for beginners...