This past weekend myself and a few friends from my study abroad program decided to take a trip to Venice for the Festa del Redentore. Il be honest, none of us really knew what the Festa del Redentore was, but we knew it involved a massive amount of fireworks and a lot of happy people. We later learned that it was traditional a feast to celebrate the end of the plague in 1576 that killed 50,000 people, which seems like a worth while reason to have a festival.
The trip started with a bit of drama. The "hotel" that we were going to stay at ended up being a small hostel that really should only fit two people per room when we needed to fit four. it also did not help that this weekend was one of the hottest in recent years and the rooms had no AC. We debated for awhile on whether or not to find a new hotel and we eventually decided to just stay. Well, at 12:30am the power in room went out. The one person that was working at the hotel came up and tried to fix it to no avail. We were forced to find a new place to stay for the night at one in the morning, since our current hotel was full. We also went and asked the man at the front desk how we could go about getting a refund, and he went off at us about how he knows that there is no AC and no power but the management will be there tomorrow, so we would go back the next day. It took a bit of looking but we found a hotel down the street that had one room available. We packed up our stuff and left for our new safe place.
When we arrived at our new hotel the old man at the front desk asked us how many people were trying to room. We said four. He said no. We didn't know what to do. We said we would pay extra but he again denied. Then, a woman comes out of the back room, says something in Italian to the old man and goes upstairs to set up a room with four beds. Thank god for nice old Italian ladies.
The next morning we found a BnB that we could stay at for the next night since our current hotel could only house us for one night. We lugged all of our luggage halfway across Venice and arrived at a very refreshing apartment where we met the owners of the BnB. They led us to our apartment, which was about 20 meters away from the lagoon between Venezia and Murano. We got very lucky.
We spent a few hours resting and then we went out to see what was going on for Redentore, which started that night. We decided to catch a water taxi to Lido, the strand of land between Venezia and the Mediterranean. The island seemed to be separated into two sects. The west side, which was the non-beach side that faced Venice and was full of family friendly celebrations, and the east side where there was a beach party all along the coast. We did not stick around either side too long because we wanted to make sure we could catch the fireworks.
We caught the taxi back to Venezia around 11:25 and less than five minutes later the fireworks started. Once we got off the boat we scrambled to find a location where we could see the fireworks. We eventually found a bridge that allowed us to see over enough buildings to see the fireworks. They lasted for about 40 minutes and were spectacular. At 12am the church bells rang, which in combination with the fireworks exploding in the distance was absolutely majestic. Something that truly could not be captured by camera. But I tried.
The next day we checked out, walked around a bit, and ended up taking a gondola ride - because what is a trip to Venice without a gondola ride. Our gondolier had been rowing the same boat since he was 18... he said he is 53 now.
After the gondola ride we made our way to the train station to end our journey and head back to Milan. The ride back was hot and it took longer than expected, but coming "home" after a busy weekend is worth it.