A few weeks ago, Kyle and I returned from our second trip to Venice together, which took place over the Redentore festival weekend. It was so fantastic to be back in Venice, to see all of our friends and our favourite scenes.

After a 3am wake-up, a 2-hour bus ride to Gatwick Airport, the flight to Venice, and the trip on the Alilaguna to the city, the first thing we did when we arrived was have our favourite panini and spritzes on the Strada Nova at Bepi’s. It was as if we never left! The only thing that made our first few days uncomfortable was the intense heat, made worse by the humidity. We quickly learned that running all over the city in a rush to see everything we wanted to see was not the way to beat the heat, and we soon slowed down (and found great comfort in the air-conditioner installed in our apartment the second day).

Our vacations together usually don’t seem all that relaxing, because we are too keen to complete our long list of sights to see, but this holiday was different. Perhaps that was because we know Venice well, and have already seen most of the sights. But I think it was a good thing to learn how to slow down, and frankly, both the heat and the masses of tourists made it pretty impossible to actually go anywhere quickly. We returned to Oxford feeling refreshed, which isn’t always the case after one of our holidays!

That isn’t to say we didn’t see anything – we visited the Doge’s Palace (Kyle had been in 2007, this was the first time for me), and I was quite excited to see Tintoretto’s Paradiso (the largest oil painting in the world), and to walk over the Bridge of Sighs. Our ticket for the Doge’s Palace also gave us entry to the Museo Correr and the Archaeological Museum, which both had interesting art and artifacts from Venice’s history. We also visited the Ca’ d’Oro, a pallazo turned art gallery on the Grand Canal. It’s really great to go to art galleries now, since I know so much more about art after working at the Ashmolean. We saw even more lovely art in several churches that we visited while using up our Chorus Church passes from last summer. I was also pretty darn excited to see the entire body of Saint Lucy (an early 4th-century Christian martyr) in the church of Santa Lucia (kind of morbid I know, but then again, I am a medievalist, and I live for relics!).

But of course, the highlight of the trip was the Redentore festival. This festival is celebrated to mark the salvation of Venice by Christ (the Redeemer/il Redentore) from the plague in the 16th century. Kyle blogged about it last summer, so I need not explain it all in detail again, but the short version is that there is a huge fireworks show on the Saturday evening (which is attended by most Venetians and all tourists), and on Sunday, a large temporary bridge is built over the Giudecca Canal to the Redentore Church to allow people to make a pilgrimage honouring the salvation from the plague. Kyle and I agree that it is difficult to explain to people just how awesome the fireworks show was – you can’t realistically describe the feeling we got from being in a traditional Venetian boat rowing through the crowded St. Mark’s Basin, tying up beside locals feasting and drinking in their decorated party-boats, and then watching the sky light up with more fireworks at once than we have ever seen before. The pictures, although really cool, hardly do the scene justice – they miss out on the ear-deafening booms, the constant screams from the crowds, the swaying of the boats, and the smell of the ash falling from the sky. It was truly an experience that I will never forget.

I would like to end this post by thanking our friends in Venice that made the trip possible – Fabio, for inviting us and for rowing us through the canals at night, and Ben (a new friend) for sharing his apartment with us. It was a fantastic trip, and we are so happy we got to go again.