The masked brigade pose for packs of photographers trying to snap their next calendar. Beside the canal is a favourite destination or in the square.

Wandering a winding narrow alley, you’ll suddenly come across one or a parade of them. They’re perfectly organized and know their best angle, but they don’t seem to be organized by anyone.

The costumes are over the top creations of rhinestones, velvet, beads, feathers, fur, jewels, and paint. They’re all custom made by hand and in five days, no two I saw were the same. Many sport matching outfits.

The cost of such costumes can easily run into the thousands and are worn but once a year. I suppose it’s still better value for money than a wedding dress. Maybe this is a wedding dress. Now, there’s a craft - turning a wedding dress into a Carnival costume.

Every night of the Carnival, there are enormous masked balls. Tickets range in price from 50 Euros to over 450 Euros. The parties are thrown by hotels, duchesses, anyone who can find the space.

Not having a costume, a mask, or 450 Euros, my friends and I decided to head to Harry’s Bar, a favorite back in the day of Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, and ordered its famous cocktail, the Bellini.

Invented during peach season in the late 1930’s to early 1940’s by Harry’s founder, Giuseppe Cipirani, the drink quickly put the bar on the map. The lush pink of the peaches he used reminded Cipirani of the color of a toga in a painting by Giovanni Bellini, a Venetian artist, and the Bellini was born.

It is made with pureed white peaches, Prosecco and a touch or cherry or raspberry juice to give it a pink glow. They’re delicious.

So over a few Bellinis, my friends and I started talking to a couple at the table next to ours. They were out for a drink before going back to their hotel to change for the evening’s masked ball. They’d spent the day posing for photographers in the St Mark’s Square.

I was riveted. Who were these people? He was a shoe salesman in his mid-forties who drove up and down Britain in a Fiat, his trunk full of samples. He had a look of Bill Gates only without the billions. She was a divorcee from Washington who worked in marketing. They had met the night before at a masked ball and were on their first date tonight.

This was his third Carnival. He looked forward to it all year and saved as much money as he could. He always stayed at the best place, the Hotel Danieli, and bought the most luxurious costumes he could. He even bought special shoes for each of his specially tailored outfits. Venice was a place where no one knew him and it gave him the chance to be who he wanted to be, to dress up, and to be famous with photographers snapping his picture.

She had come with her girlfriends after one had split from her husband. She had been to Carnival many years ago and had always wanted to return as one of the masked ones. During the past few days, she had met a number of other costumed people and was surprised only a few of them were Italian – so many of them were from either America or around Europe. They had normal every day jobs and were escaping from their routine lives. Most had visited, caught the bug, and vowed to return.

So if you don’t see me next year in Venice, you never know, I might be wearing a mask.

For more information on: Carnival activities and the Hotel Danieli

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Contents

Letters from London

Venice Carnival

Bellinis

Make a Mask

Make-up Clutch

Vamp it Up! Apron

Heart Shaped Bear

Passion for Painting

Credit Crunch Charity Challenge

© 2007–2008 Michele Young