After I’d filled half my memory card with Carnevale photos, it was still only about 9am, so I took a solo journey out to the island village of Burano to take some more photos while things were still relatively quiet. Erin’s not much of a morning person (nor am I, though I can occasionally be convinced to pry myself out of bed early for the right photo op), so we’d agreed the night before that I would scout ahead first, and then I could return with her and Emi later in the afternoon.
I hopped on a vaporetto (Venetian waterbuses) to make the 40-minute jaunt to Burano. Lacemaking is the island’s specialty, but if you’ve heard of Burano and are not from the area, it’s more than likely for the vivid, colorful paint jobs that adorn almost every one of their buildings. Calling it eye candy is an understatement.
By late morning, it was time to head back to Venice to reconvene with the ladies. After a quick lunch, we made our group trip out to Burano, this time taking a few moments to soak in the atmosphere. Besides more photos, we ducked into some lace shops to see what that was all about, and had some drinks (and gelato for Emi) out in one of the town piazzas.
We stuck around longer than planned, which in Burano often means a long wait ahead of you to get back to Venice. The vast majority of visitors are just day-tripping, so the hordes converge on the island’s only vaporetto stand as the light fades and the cool ocean breeze starts flowing in. While the vaporetto to and from Burano runs every 20 minutes or so during the day, it becomes more sparse by sunset, so if you get unlucky, you might be waiting around for over an hour. Our wait to board was something like 30–40 minutes, but I’ve got absolutely no regrets; the sun had a taste for the dramatic that evening.
Our third day, we went to a hotel near Piazza San Marco to get outfitted with costumes for a daytime costume ball with dancing, drinking chocolate, and fried, doughy goodness. The more extravagant balls generally occur at night, but this was the best Emilia-friendly option we found. After putting on my dandiest, and rejoining my similarly ornate ladies, we wandered around for a while to kill some time and make the most of our snazzy duds.
It was a pretty surreal experience, as we were constantly being stopped for people to take pictures of us, sometimes with us. I honestly hadn’t expected to get photographed much, mostly because there were countless costumed people in outfits more elaborate than ours, often with equally elaborate masks to go with them. I’m pretty sure what I hadn’t factored in was that there wasn’t an abundance of adorable children in fancy costumes. Kids at Carnevale, especially local kids, generally don the sorts of costumes Americans typically see around Halloween, though without the focus on scary stuff. As such, I think the paparazzi was more about Emilia, and Erin and I were kind of sucked in by association. It was mostly amusing to Erin and I, but Emilia was not really digging it after a while, so we had to move a little more briskly (not an easy task for Erin, trying to navigate some of Venice’s narrow alleyways while wearing a hoop skirt) to avoid getting stopped so much.
The ball itself was a fun reminder that I suck at dancing, but was enjoyable nonetheless; the presence of sugared goods never hurts. Emi lasted a few rounds of dancing, but ultimately spent a good portion of it kicking back with some liquid chocolate refreshment.
After we turned in our literal fancy pants and such, we watched the sunset from Piazza San Marco, and headed to Ai Artisti for dinner at our hotel’s recommendation. A fair way from the more heavily trafficked tourist areas of Venice, we were treated to a delicious seafood meal, including some fantastic roasted octopus with a lemon sauce.
The next morning, we packed up our things and caught a water taxi to the train station, off to Rome to prepare to move to our new apartment, and for our trip to Marrakech.
