Italy- Venice, Padua, Verona

Vacation !
My friend Lisa Beebe joined me for a two week adventure through Italy and Bulgaria. These are our stories.
Why?
Italy because Lisa has a friend studying in Rome and Bulgaria because of my friend Zach who lives in Sofia.

It all started on an early February morning. Walking out of my tiny apartment in Montataire with my necessities for two weeks vacuumed sealed and squished into my big green backpack. After taking bus,train,taxi and almost missing our flight (nice work of arguing Lisa!) we arrived safely in Milan, the valley of the Italian Dolomites.
Huge mountains and sunshine, constant sunshine from when we parted the clouds above France to when we touched down in Italy. Oh, how I missed the sun.
Speaking Italian proved to be a bit interesting for me and Lisa. We forgot that we left France (it was only an hour plane ride and neither of us had slept for 24 hours, to say we were tired and a bit groggy is true) and continued speaking in French to Italians, until one of us realized they had no clue what we were saying. Haha.
We struggled and laughed with our si's and oui's constantly changing them back and forth. Learned dov'e? et chinquay but to say italian is similar to french...no. Italian is similar to spanish. But we made friends everywhere with our fren-talian. The Italians are tri-lingual easily and probably nicer than they seem.
Italy has amazing cappucino's and brioche. These saved our lives many a dire moment. Mmm nothing compares to that nice milky foam that you can scoop up with your tiny spoon after you have finished the dark liquid adrenaline that is italian cafe. Tangent! Anyways....

After our cafe wake up call we headed out to Milan Train station about an hour away and to get on a train headed for Venice. This was our ultimate planned destination. Venice during Carnival. Luckily before we left, Lisa contacted a couch surfer named Guiseppe who was kind enough to let us crash with him a few days on the condition that we make peanut butter pasta for him. It's quite the american delicacy.
That cute Italian man is Gusieppe and the bowl Lisa is holding is full of peanut butter pasta.
Sidenote: Couchsurfing is a network of people throughout the world that offer their homes as a place to stay for travelers (for free) in the belief of sharing one anothers culture and being able to have a place to stay with someone who is willing to contribute to your experience of thier home and country. In other words, friends you haven't met yet. All fellow travelers and world traveling supporters.

So far.... Milan> Verona> Padua> VENICE!!

On the train to Venice looking out across the northern Italian countryside were many farms and small villages. Then, slowly, the mountains faded and we entered into Venice.

There are no cars on the old island just thousands of boats, gondoliers, skiffs, I think we even saw a few kayaks. The city when it first appears to you seems so tiny. Get lost a little bit in any of it's backstreets and you will be assured it is anything but that. It's just a myriad of mazes, bridges and canals. The air smells so fresh and clean and the canals do all they can to seep out into the lagoon surronding the fish shaped island. On our first day (Friday) Lisa and I stumbled around eating gelato and admiring the booths set up for Carnival. Masks, capes, toys, souveniers, food and milling about were people already dressed up as fairies, royalty and clowns. We retired back to Padua, where Gusieppe lived, about 30 minutes by train from Venice. Arriving there we dressed up to the best of our travelers ability in masks and painted our faces for a Carnival party in Verona. An hour drive later we arrived in Verona, the middle of a vineyard with about 30 other people dressed in the most imaginative things. There were pigs, amoebas, a cactus, phantoms, clowns, bellydancers and puss in boots. A lot of competition for the best dressed and most original prize to be awarded at the end of the night. Take a look at the photo and geuss who won. So that was Verona and the Couchsurfer party.
The next day we walked around Padua, enjoyed Europe's largest square full of Roman inspired architechture and beautiful statues surronding (what else?) a canal and beautiful fountains. Padua was very peaceful and gave us a taste for the Northern Italian lifestyle.

Venice for the Carnival weekend was packed. Honestly. If this city is sinking slowly then it goes a little bit faster during carnival. The sheer numbers of people, mostly italians, who attend the masked balls, dressed up and walked the streets of Venice is nuts. So the tourists were of course sore thumbs do to our lack of appropriate costumes. Even though on our trip we made the best of it by buying masks, we came no where close to fitting in. By hitting up the big tourist spots (St.Mark's square, Grand Canal etc.) early, we spent most of our time in the side streets and wandering. We were taking pictures, eating gelato, which is a huge theme of this trip, and just enjoying the atmosphere. Best way to enjoy a city is to jump into the melee and then retreat. A little flavor of both. No matter where we went Carnival found us. Such as a drum corp of smurfs, Uncle Scrooge ducks that want a hand out from Obama, and hundreds of others.