venice & milan! (extremely delayed)

so, i know this happened about a month ago (feb 20-23)... but i've been super busy with schoolwork & spring break (more on that to come later), so... enjoy it in all it's delayed & partially-forgotten glory.

after arriving, we dropped our stuff off at our hotel (Hotel Agriturismo Ca' Tessera), and took the bus back into town to take our first ferry ride. the sunset was indescribable.



we then had our first italian dinner, which was kinda... meh. (food in rome is a million times better). what venice definitely DOES have to offer is the masks. THERE ARE MASKS EVERYWHERE. granted, it was carnivale, but the mask stores make up about half the stores.








(yes, people wore these in the streets.)

after gorging on gelato (which we ate tons of), we ran into a beatles cover band (called the bitters), and checked out a drag show. i took videos / pictures, but i'm not really sure anyone wants to see a guy in a very glittery thong singing "get this party started"... i know i don't want to again.





the next day we had the most amazing cichetti, stared at all the amazing canals and outfits that people wore, and stumbled upon the da vinci museum, where i found out he invented the hall of mirrors (when i was 4 or 5 i went in it and walked into every mirror and got very bruised. damn you da vinci). also, he invented how to walk on water. smart guy.

we then ate the most delicious pizza in the world:


and headed back to piazza san marco to take more pictures of the insane outfits.

while in venice, we also went to the island of murano where they make world famous glass [& we watched a guy make glass & i bought stuff which broke :(]-




& we also went to an opera, the jewish ghetto (which is the world's first ghetto, formed in the 1500's. yay italy =/), checked out the rialto bridge, and ate a tonnnnnn.

on monday we went to milan, where we checked out the world famous duomo church & castello sforzesco (italian for huge beautiful castle).


the duomo


the castle

we walked A MILLION miles, & it was probably one of the best weekends of my life. sorry for the lack of text, but the photos pretty much say it all.

here's all the photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017975&id=1379550005&l=04e65394ec
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017977&id=1379550005&l=ebf39b637b
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017980&id=1379550005&l=b73049bd9e
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017981&id=1379550005&l=62a2a96351