Venezia Carnevale- Disastro.

Venice Carnevale; 3 February, 2013.

Excited for our first day trip out of Florence, we all board the 8.30am bus to Venezia for Carnevale on Saturday morning!

The weather is kind of gloomy, but a little warmer in Florence. As we get further into the drive and closer to Venice, it is raining.

Arriving to the water taxi station where we bought tickets for it to drop us off at Piazza San Marco, it is still down pouring. A few of the girls forgot umbrellas, so we bought a few more and a couple of them bought rain boots to prepare for the long day ahead.

Last time I was in Venice, four years ago, it rained a little and then cleared up. I was confident that was how our day was going to turn out this time.

We arrive at Piazza San Marco and there are so many people. Everywhere. It was hard to even walk...and on top of it, everyone had umbrellas and was trying to fit through the small side streets at the same time. Not happening.

We were starving by the time we got there around 1pm. The place we chose for lunch gave a few of us the wrong vibes... but we were so hungry we stayed there to eat anyway.

We decide to order three pizzas and two bottles of wine for our table. This is when the issues began to occur.

Instead of receiving pepperoni (the meat) on our pizza, we got all peppers. Which was fine, we ate it anyway. 

The third pizza was all veggies. Sitting right in front of me, I pick up a piece and start to eat it. Of course, I spotted a small black hair on one of the pieces, so I put it down and call the waiter over. He proceeds to call a bus boy and have him order us another pizza. We did not want to wait there and we weren't hungry anymore, so the girls were trying to get them to just give us the pizza for free; take it off the bill, like places would in America. Nope. They were not going to do that.

We get up, Tara and another girl go to get their umbrellas from the host who seated us, and he tells them he does not have their umbrellas.

The waiters hate us for the whole pizza situation, now he loses their umbrellas, and it's pouring out. Tara is arguing back and forth and by now there is a huge scene in the restaurant. While Tara is arguing with the waiters and host, Lauren is looking under the table making sure we did not leave the umbrellas there ourselves. She gets up, turns around, and knocks the wine glasses off the table... They shatter everywhere.

Everyone stops talking, stares at all of us, and we sprint out of the restaurant. We are dying laughing, running down the street in the pouring rain, not believing what just happened.

After collecting ourselves, we bought ourselves some Carnevale masks and more umbrellas, and ran into some of the guys from our program at school. We all just wanted to go somewhere to sit and hang out. One of the guys insists he knows where a pub is, so we spent the next 3 hours walking in a single file line through Venice, searching for a pub.

During that time, half of us got split up and could not find any of the others from our group. Me, Gianna and our friend Zach are standing in the middle of Piazza San Marco, when Gianna's umbrella cracks in half. In search for the water taxi to bring us to our bus home, I proceeded to lose my Italian cellphone and gloves somehow while running in the rain for an hour to the bus.

We finally get back and see everyone we had split up from. We all look like we just jumped into the water. That's how soaked all our clothes were. The bus smells like fish and dirty dogs.

Soaking wet and miserable, we all just want to get home. At this point, all we can do is laugh about what went on during our day. Carnevale was cancelled, so we literally just went there to walk around outside in the terrible weather. But regardless, we still had a lot of fun together, laughing the entire day, which is all that really matters.