the masquerade

I have returned from Venice. WOW. It's beautiful. St. Marco's square is amazing. There was a little market with antiques and used items on one of the streets so I bought a little painting of gondola in a canal. It is a good little souvenir from my visit. Unfortunately I did not buy a mask because 1. the ones i wanted were really expensive and 2. It would be very difficult to get it home in one piece. But if i decide to have a masquerade wedding one day (which is highly probable) I will have to order one online.

People really get into the Carnival in Venice. Some people work on their costumes all year round. The masks are ridiculous and extravagant! Some of them are so over the top. At times I could not tell if it was the Carnival or Halloween based on people's interesting costumes. Most of the narrow little pedestrian streets were stuffed full of people. At night there were police monitoring pedestrian traffic. ha. Oh also, we took the "boat metro" to and from our hostel because Venice is made up of islands and there is no bridge connecting them and no cars of the islands. Trying to figure out Italian was pretty interesting too.

Getting to and from Venice was pretty close to hell though... our guide was very disorganized (which isn't that surprising because every kind of business and organization in France is half-cocked, really unprofessional and unofficial) and the bus ride was over 9 hours each way, through the night.

It feels good to be back in France though, we were literally walking around all day for two days straight. Chloe and I went off the beaten path a little and discovered some great sights away from the chaos. It was nice, but traveling can be really stressful.

wish you were here! xoxo.