Viva Italia!

Gondolier on break

In honor of Italy's penalty shootout win over England in the Euro 2012 knock-out phase, I thought I would write about my favorite Italian travel moment. I am not an expert on Italy, to be honest I have only been to one place, Venice. I didn't even really want to go there. I was coming back from parts of the former Yugoslavia and it was much cheaper to fly back to New York from Venice than from Ljubljana, Slovenia so I took the train and spent 3 days in Venice. I always had this picture of Venice in my mind where the city was filled with Shakespeare wannabes and newlyweds from Cincinnati  swooning over the gondoliers. I did see some guys dressed like Romeo and there were plenty of annoying American tourists giving the world even more reasons to hate us. With all of those misgivings, Venice still managed to endear itself to me with its' Festa del Redentore, the Feast of the Redeemer. An annual festival that celebrates the ending of the plague of 1576. I mean, what better reason to have a celebration!

Temporary Bridge to the Church of Redentore

The focal landmark of the weekend festival is the Church of the Redeemer. Each year during this weekend they build a temporary bridge over the Grand Canal so people can walk to the Church of Redentore. If you have motion sickness, you might die on this bridge. It sways from one side to the other more than Mitt Romney. The best part of this bridge is that it  shuts down the Grand Canal to the big cruise ships for one weekend of the year, which drastically cuts down on the number of Texans wearing Hawaiian shirts with their cameras around their necks.

The best boat during the parade

The festival includes a variety of activities throughout the weekend with the two highlights being the incredible fireworks display from the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) late Saturday night and the parade of boats down the Grand Canal. I staked out a spot on the Rialto Bridge so I could watch the boats come down the canal. There were small boats with elderly gondoliers. There were boats with scantily clad women and men. Then, this boat came along that absolutely blew my mind. It had it's own DJ spinning some Euro trash tunes. It was filled with a late 20's and early 30's crowd grinning from ear to ear. They were having a blast! This man jumped up on the ledge of the boat just as they were approaching the Rialto Bridge, removed his hat and bowed to the bridge. If this scene happened in a movie I would chalk it up to Hollywood nonsense, but there it was, in real life. An Italian man on a boat in Venice bowing to it's most famous bridge during a festival to celebrate the ending of a plague 500 years ago. For the rest of my life whenever someone mentions Venice this is the image I will have in mind. In that instant the Shakespeare wannabes and American newlyweds were banished from my mind forever. Venice had redeemed itself.