Venice
On Saturday, I went to Venice to check out the last weekend of Carnivale. Going to Carnivale in Venice is to Italians what going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans is to Americans. A huge, crowded, pre-lent party. So of course I figured that would be a must-go-to event!
I started the day by island hopping... rows of pillars mark out the waterways for traffic between the islands:
First stop Burano - famous for making lace. Like when you hear about Venetian Lace, yeah that's these guys. And why that requires living in rainbow colored houses... I don't know. But WOW.
A fun place to get lost. And I even found the one spot with grass there :)
Oh, and I found my first people who were dressed up to head to the main island for carnivale:
So then I hopped on a boat over to torcello (they have all these complex lines that boats run like a metro system on the water). Torcello is an undeveloped island, predominantly, but it has one walkway that goes about 10 minutes back to an abandoned church. Apparently 10k people lived there over 1000 years ago and it was THE place to be, so there is this over 1300 year old church. And I heard that it has incredible mosaics, and I have always found mosaic work to be awesome, so I made the stop:
yeah, that whole gold wall is mosaic, and here is the lower right details:
So I left Torcello as the day was ending
and I made a quick stop on the island of Murano to replace the glass earrings that I lost at some point over the last 6 years since when I bought glass earrings there. Caught them at the end of the day and ended up getting 3 pair for 15 euro! I bought them at this shop:
(just realized you can see my reflection in that picture taking that picture, hee hee).
So I had a sunset ride back to Saint Mark's (I set a high ISO to try to capture the light with all that boat movement, and ended up getting bright, colorful bands of sky around the sun)
but it wasn't late enough for me to commit to partying for the evening, so I wandered around to snap night shots:
After getting advice from 2 Venetians on dinner, I became determined to find this place called Antico Forno. Okay - so you really aren't supposed to go to anywhere in northern Italy let alone Venice looking for pizza, and there are plenty of gross options to be had. And I mean some BAD pizza. But people rave about Antico Forno being so good that it's even good to eat their by-the-slice pizza. So off I went to get lost trying to find this place - not in the fun "lets get lost in a foreign city" way. It seriously took me an hour to get there from Saint Mark's. Okay so I should have gotten a map of Venice, hahaha. But right when I lit a cigarette to contemplate surrendering to the cold and dying hungry, right when I was positive that I should just forget it -- especially realizing that I hadn't seen a single person for a few blocks -- I heard people. A whole cluster. All waiting for pizza! In fact so many that this was the best pic I could get of the facade:
And their pizza is AWESOME. (And since I spent soo long finding it, yeah, I'm posting pics of it!) Super fresh, generous toppings with hand torn clumps of soft, fresh cheese. This is no-nonsense pizza. The thin crust was super thin:
and the thick crust was super thick:
It was the best pizza I have had so far. I would go back to Venice just for that pizza. Really. I stayed for 2 slices and 2 cups of mulled wine (for my hands and my insides!). At 2.60 euro for a big slice and 1.50 euro per cup of the vin brule... this place is on my top 10 list of restaurants anywhere ever.
While I was lost looking for pizza, I found this piazza full of dancing flip-flops from Brazil...
and this chick who's stilts looks like legs & feet!
Ok, so after pizza, it only took me 3 minutes to get back to the main canal from Antico Forno, which means I really am retarded. This is like the highway of Venice, and the famous bridge crossing over it is Ponte di Rialto, which I sped away from in a vaporetto (cool Venetian word for water bus):
I passed the entrance to "Il Ballo del Doge" on the way. THE premier Carnivale event in all of Venice. Tickets for the evening range 900-2500 euro per person depending on how long you stay and whether or not you have dinner there. It was starting up right as I went by, and people were arriving in private water taxis to enter the pink-lighted building for the event:
Piazza San Marco is a different place for Carnivale. Stages and lights and continually falling confetti and more vin brule and crazy funness:
umm, bart and lisa were there???
And yeah, I was there too:
I started the day by island hopping... rows of pillars mark out the waterways for traffic between the islands:
First stop Burano - famous for making lace. Like when you hear about Venetian Lace, yeah that's these guys. And why that requires living in rainbow colored houses... I don't know. But WOW.
A fun place to get lost. And I even found the one spot with grass there :)
Oh, and I found my first people who were dressed up to head to the main island for carnivale:
So then I hopped on a boat over to torcello (they have all these complex lines that boats run like a metro system on the water). Torcello is an undeveloped island, predominantly, but it has one walkway that goes about 10 minutes back to an abandoned church. Apparently 10k people lived there over 1000 years ago and it was THE place to be, so there is this over 1300 year old church. And I heard that it has incredible mosaics, and I have always found mosaic work to be awesome, so I made the stop:
yeah, that whole gold wall is mosaic, and here is the lower right details:
So I left Torcello as the day was ending
and I made a quick stop on the island of Murano to replace the glass earrings that I lost at some point over the last 6 years since when I bought glass earrings there. Caught them at the end of the day and ended up getting 3 pair for 15 euro! I bought them at this shop:
(just realized you can see my reflection in that picture taking that picture, hee hee).
So I had a sunset ride back to Saint Mark's (I set a high ISO to try to capture the light with all that boat movement, and ended up getting bright, colorful bands of sky around the sun)
but it wasn't late enough for me to commit to partying for the evening, so I wandered around to snap night shots:
After getting advice from 2 Venetians on dinner, I became determined to find this place called Antico Forno. Okay - so you really aren't supposed to go to anywhere in northern Italy let alone Venice looking for pizza, and there are plenty of gross options to be had. And I mean some BAD pizza. But people rave about Antico Forno being so good that it's even good to eat their by-the-slice pizza. So off I went to get lost trying to find this place - not in the fun "lets get lost in a foreign city" way. It seriously took me an hour to get there from Saint Mark's. Okay so I should have gotten a map of Venice, hahaha. But right when I lit a cigarette to contemplate surrendering to the cold and dying hungry, right when I was positive that I should just forget it -- especially realizing that I hadn't seen a single person for a few blocks -- I heard people. A whole cluster. All waiting for pizza! In fact so many that this was the best pic I could get of the facade:
And their pizza is AWESOME. (And since I spent soo long finding it, yeah, I'm posting pics of it!) Super fresh, generous toppings with hand torn clumps of soft, fresh cheese. This is no-nonsense pizza. The thin crust was super thin:
and the thick crust was super thick:
It was the best pizza I have had so far. I would go back to Venice just for that pizza. Really. I stayed for 2 slices and 2 cups of mulled wine (for my hands and my insides!). At 2.60 euro for a big slice and 1.50 euro per cup of the vin brule... this place is on my top 10 list of restaurants anywhere ever.
While I was lost looking for pizza, I found this piazza full of dancing flip-flops from Brazil...
and this chick who's stilts looks like legs & feet!
Ok, so after pizza, it only took me 3 minutes to get back to the main canal from Antico Forno, which means I really am retarded. This is like the highway of Venice, and the famous bridge crossing over it is Ponte di Rialto, which I sped away from in a vaporetto (cool Venetian word for water bus):
I passed the entrance to "Il Ballo del Doge" on the way. THE premier Carnivale event in all of Venice. Tickets for the evening range 900-2500 euro per person depending on how long you stay and whether or not you have dinner there. It was starting up right as I went by, and people were arriving in private water taxis to enter the pink-lighted building for the event:
Piazza San Marco is a different place for Carnivale. Stages and lights and continually falling confetti and more vin brule and crazy funness:
umm, bart and lisa were there???
And yeah, I was there too:
posted by LMO at 6:23 AM
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