From January 23 – February 9, 2016, Venice will slough off the winter gloom and burst into life. During the Carnival (Carnevale), this most magical of cities fills with a mass of masked party-goers – posing and preening, dancing and philandering, in a slightly surreal re-invention of a great tradition of the city.Jan 22, 2016  www.telegraph.co.uk 

Carnavale is an annual festival in Venice that ends with the beginning of lent, forty days before Easter on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.  It is world famous  for the elegant costumes and elaborate masks.

Venice is at  the  top of my list of favorite visited places, ever!  It is hard to have adjectives that do it justice, but magical in the text above is a good place to start.  We took students studying in Rome  to a weekend in Venice during Carnavele, years ago.  We had no idea of the beauty and quality of the costumes and intricate design of the masks we would see.  We walked through the windy, narrow lanes and bridges seeing these fanciful masked characters, parting the fog as they approached.  All were  on the way to the Piazza St Marco for dancing to the surround sound of bands in every corner of that  most beautiful urban space.

Be amazed!   Have any of you been to Carnavale or Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro?