Venezia=Venice...What?

Yesterday we went to Venice for the first time in the nearly 2 (husband's nearly 2.5) years stationed here at Aviano! I know sad, but remember we aren't exactly your typical world travelers.

Sunday, February 23 was the start of "Carnevale" aka what I like to call "Italians mix of theater costumes and Halloween...yikes. It was crazy busy. One of my major pet peeves is being in a huge crowd of people; especially a huge crowd of foreigners. Yeah, not my cup of tea.

We went with some friends who had been to Venice previously, which helped tremendously to know where to go...because being the complete tourists my husband and myself are, and of course thinking we can totally get by and not read any maps or brochures; would have totally and completely screwed up this trip to Venice...ha!

Here in Italy if you want to get from point A to point B one typically takes the train. One of the many types of transportation I have never had the chance to endear in my short little life. So what better way to get to Venice than by taking the train?

Well, after a crazy schedule and hopping numerous trains due to our first train not functioning we finally made it to Venice...only 3 hours later than we had originally planned. It was Cah-Razey! No like totally and completely populated by tons of foreigners, Italians mostly (hence living in Italy, duh.)

Here are some pics of our first time in Venice during Carnevale!

On one of the bridges in Venice...can't remember if this one had a name!

There were a TON of masks of all different characters!

Sun glare. Not the best thing for a lens without a UV filter, but I still thought this shot was cool.

Gondola! These were everywhere!

As you could tell by this pic, the streets were incredibly crowded. Not the best for a person with severe claustrophobia and anxiety!

Nutella treat. How could we say no?

Over another bridge. 

We took a water taxi thing back to the train station.

I'm still getting the bugs worked out on my camera, so sadly all these shots were taken in the auto mode (Not the best to learn with on a DSLR!) I'm still messing around with all the different modes and forcing myself to stay in manual mode (although it's confusing because I don't know what half of these numbers mean!) Looks like it's back to YouTube tutorials!