travelousness: Festival: Carnavale in Venice

When To Go:
During Mardi Gras season, usually late January – mid March.

How to Get There (on a budget):
From London, fly into Treviso Airport via Ryan Air; then take the bus from Treviso Airport straight into Piazzale Roma, Venice (5EUR, 30-40minutes)

Carnavale in Venice is a fantabulous annual festival that will leave you feeling like you stepped back in time, to an age when details weren't an indulgence, but a necessity. Even if you do not attend the balls and fancy dinners, it is still worth the trip just to wander through the past and enjoy the beautiful costumes and masks of bright colors and patterns.

San Marco Square is the heart of the festival, of course. People of all walks of life converge onto the Square for the concert to start off the celebration of Carnavale.

If you look outside of the crowds in the arcades, you can spot a few well dressed costumers posing for tourist photos. You can find them wandering all over Venice, readily stopping to pose for the "paparazzi."

Even the window displays are exquisitely dressed. Here, you can drool over the stunning array of colors, feathers, beads, sequins, and glitter. They were delicious eye candy, but I could not afford even one feather on any of these masks.

Getting Dressed Up for the Costume Ball

It’s the day of the costume ball. My friends and I made our way to Tragicomica, the atelier where we reserved period costumes for the ball. We were giddy at the thought of getting dressed up in hooped skirts and fancy dresses. After the dress fitting, we lunched at the café next door. Bellinis were already enjoyed at this same café while we waited for our appointment time at the atelier. When lunch was finished, we picked up our dresses and shopped for our masks as we made our way back to the hotel. No one told us that the dresses would be so heavy. In essence, it wasn’t the dress itself that was the problem, but the hooped skirt. The hoop must have weighed a ton! My arms had gotten a nice workout and were thoroughly weak by the time we returned to the hotel.

Shopping for the mask was a bigger undertaking that I imagined. There are so many designs and options to choose from. The cheapest mask we saw ran about 8EUR and then it scaled in price from there. Each of us was able to find a decent mask that worked best with our costumes for about 15EUR. I’m glad I chose to get my mask in Venice instead of London, as was my original thought. The same style of mask in London cost about 25GBP.

Getting dressed up and making ourselves beautiful was no easy feat as a lot of time was spent in doing our hair. But the end result after donning the gowns was so much fun! We left our hotel in plenty of time before the ball, but we wanted to make sure we knew exactly where it was so we wouldn’t be late. The traghetto brought us one stop across the Grand Canal from Salute to San Marco. We disembarked and, not wanting to get our dresses dirty, carried our heavily hooped skirts across the piazza. The first time we were stopped for a photo request, we were surprised, but we obliged. Then we were stopped no less than twenty more times in the hour we spent looking for the venue. Sometimes the photo stops lasted for five minutes as we drew a crowd of people around us. One couple asked me to pose with their child for a photo. One Italian man stopped us for a photo with him. He was wearing a mask, but you could tell how attractive and youthful he was. So when he asked for a kiss on the cheek when the picture was taken, I had no trouble proffering my lips.

Finally, with the help of some of the shop owners, we found the venue with still another 30 minutes to spare. We took refuge in a tea salon, where it cost 8EUR for a cup of tea! I couldn’t believe my eyes. So, note to self and other world travelers: do not take tea in San Marco Square. Our gowns were getting a lot of attention everywhere, including the tea shop. The couple next to us asked where we rented our gowns as the wife thought we looked very beautiful. Not to downplay our attire because I thought it was very much fun to get dressed up in period fashion (although my gown was the least interesting of the three), but I have seen many costumes in San Marco Square and I didn’t think that our dresses compared to the other costumes. I thought we looked rather plain Jane (our masks included) after seeing some of the other costumes last night. Despite my feelings, we were constantly being complimented. When we walked out of the tea salon to attend our ball, there was a swarm of people waiting to take photos of us. We posed for fifty cameras for ten minutes. For just a brief night, I felt like a celebrity being stalked by the paparazzi.

The ball consisted first of a formal dinner, and then dancing afterward. All the guests were dressed in costume. Everyone looked beautiful and extremely interesting. The dinner was delicious although I was so hungry I would’ve eaten anything. Our glasses were never empty of water or wine. By the end of it, I was so full I couldn’t touch dessert. Dancing was a treat. I know from past dance classes that I have two left feet. The man who filled up my dance card for the evening was very patient with me.

It was a fine night. Unlike Cinderella, none of us turned into pumpkins at midnight.