Festa del Redentore - A Venetian feast for the soul...

Despite 17 years and 22 trips to Venice, Sarah and I never made it to Venice for la Festa del Redentore (the feast of the redeemer), which is Venice's annual festival to celebrate La Serenissima's escape for the plague in 1576.

Sarah loathed hot weather and I think this was probably the main reason we never made it to Venice for Redentore together. The cost of hotels during Redentore also put us off as we would always chose to come a less expensive times, mostly so we could come to Venice more often.

At the start of this year whilst planning the road trip I came across a snippet about Redentore and decide to have a look to see what might be possible and found that accommodation was much cheaper than I expected, so within two hours of starting to look I had booked to come to Venice for Redentore. Fast forward five months and I'm here the day after the night before (hangover and all!!).

I'd like to thank Luisella Romeo, her lovely husband Roberto, plus Massimo Gin and Francesco Pavan for enabling me to join them onboard the lovely Venetian Trabaccolo Il Nuovo Trionfo (I'm planning a separate post about this lovely grand old lady) for a very memorable evening of wine, amazing local food and probably the best fireworks display I've ever seen,

Luisella also introduced me to Rob and Gail, two of her long standing friends from the United States who were also attending Redentore for the first time.

Together we had an evening that will stay with me for a very long time to come.

The volunteers who run the Nuovo Trionfo charity excelled themselves we were wined and dined with a superb selection of local specialities including bovoletti; a treat traditionally served to diners at Festa del Redentore. Bovoletti are snails gathered from plants living typically on the waterfront plants on Lido Di Venezia, these are fed for a few days, purged and then cooked and served with a dressing of parsley, garlic and olive oil. Sarah would have loved them and she would have been rolling round in laughter to see me eating them!!

I promised Luisella that I would post a photo of us onboard the boat for Jonathan (Sarah's brother), so here's the best one. The worst one is immediately below and I look even more gormless than normal (In my defence I was already ticking gently by then; don't say I didn't warn you).

I also managed to get a lovely photo of my hosts Luisella and Roberto

One of the most magical things I spotted was a gondolier rowing his passengers across the basin during the fireworks. It reminded me how fortunate I was to not only be in Venice during Redentore but also to be right at the very heart of the celebrations on the only remaining Trabaccolo in the world. I could not have asked for a better experience.

I'll post links to videos on OneDrive, as they are too big to add to this site. Head's Up... The files are too big to download over a mobile data connections and I would hate for anyone to have to pay a mobile network to watch the videos!

Bravo Massimo, Francesco e tutti gli altri coinvolti nel fornire un'esperienza così memorabile. Grazie dal profondo del mio cuore!

More to follow...

Alan