Halloween

Hi all,

I know it’s a few days late, but I hope everyone had a good Halloween, with plenty of candy. Sorry that this blog took so long to put up but I planned to publish it Tuesday and then our Internet went out on the island. However, we’re back up now, so here’s my Halloween post, just a few days late.

Halloween on a Saturday is always a good deal. Since half of the group had gone to London to spend the weekend there, the rest of us decided we needed to do something special, even if it didn’t involve flying to England. So we (Caylen, Audrey, Natalie, Dane, and I) decided to catch a vaporetto out to some of the farther away islands in the northern part of the lagoon, specifically Burano and Torcello.

The boat ride was actually pretty long, about half an hour from the main part of Venice to Burano, but it was a beautiful day, though a little chilly, and the ride was nice because it felt like we were really leaving Venice and going on a day trip. Burano is famous for making lace and almost as soon as we got off the boat we saw three different stores selling lace goods, dresses, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, and baby clothes. Most of it was very pretty, but very expensive. Almost every shop that we went into also had tons of lace items. It was pretty touristy in most parts, but it was an awesome island, in spite of that. The houses were all different, bright colors, and it felt calm and relaxed in the non-shopping area parts, very different from Venice, which is always busy. There were also cats everywhere, we must have seen at least twenty of them, just wandering around, like the dogs do in Venice. We stopped for lunch at this sandwich shop/bar, which had absolutely amazing paninis, which are basically just grilled sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I don’t know if I was just really hungry at that point or if it was just a really good sandwich, but I thought it was delicious-ham, cheese, and tomato on nice crunchy, Italian bread. We also saw, in the main shopping district, signs that had been put up advertising a showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Harry Potter e il Principe Mezzosangue, in Italian) over the weekend.

After a little more shopping and wandering around Burano, we caught another vaporetto over to Torcello, which is this tiny island about five minutes away from Burano and on which apparently only 22 people live (according to Caylen). It was gorgeous, though. There’s only one street, which follows along the one canal, and which leads past a couple of restaurants to the museum and the church. Apparently Torcello was the original city center of Venice, way back when, and the bishop continued to live there for a time, even after the city had been moved to where Venice is now, which is why there is a church there (this is all according to Dane). We didn’t go in the church, because it was kind-of expensive to go in, but we did go in the baptistery next door, which was free, and which was very nice. There was also a giant stone armchair outside the small museum across from the church, so we took a picture of us all sitting on it. There was also a bridge, on the way to the church, called Ponte del Diavolo, which means Devil’s Bridge. It was a little scary to walk across, just because it was kind-of high over the canal and had no railings or anything. However, it was cool, and on the other side was this little gravel path that went back towards a couple of farmhouses that were there, very picturesque, it was like postcard-perfect Italian countryside back there.

On the way back from Torcello, we stopped at San Michele, which is the cemetery island. It seemed appropriate for Halloween, but it was actually disappointingly not creepy. It looked like a pretty modern cemetery, though there were some cool bigger buildings, about the size of garden sheds, which were either tombs or chapels. We couldn’t stay at the cemetery long because we had to get back to the stop to catch our vaporetto, so there may have been creepier, older tombs that we missed. Even though it wasn’t too creepy, it was still fun to be in a cemetery on Halloween evening.

Before heading back to San Servolo, Audrey and Caylen and I went down Via Garibaldi (Garibaldi Street) to get some snacks for the night. We did actually see some kids trick-or-treating, most of them dressed up either as witches, or wearing monster masks and black clothes. Those seemed to be the most popular costumes. They weren’t trick-or-treating at houses, though, they were going into the shops on the street and the people working there were handing out treats. Definitely a bit different from trick-or-treating in Greendale. We did actually have one trick-or-treater on San Servolo, our professors’ four-year-old son Lorenzo. He came around to each of our rooms and we had candy for him. Then, he wanted each person to say “trick-or-treat” to him, so he could give us each a cookie. It was very cute. For his costume, he had on an orange and black Venetian mask. My costume was simply all the black clothes I had in my closet, since I didn’t think to bring stuff for a real costume. Then, after dinner, Audrey, Caylen, and I hung out in my room and ate candy and watched Twilight and Interview with a Vampire, good Halloween movies. So all in all, a very fun Halloween.

I hope you all had a good Halloween, too, and as always, keep leaving me comments!

Ciao,
Maria : )