Come hell or high water, or both

For those of you who were in Piazza S. Marco last weekend, it was bad news. Flooding arrived early and the city and the tourists were unprepared. City unprepared? Well, acqua alta usually happens in the months of October and November and it can happen as few as 5 times per annum to 30 times. It all depends on air pressure, wind direction, moon position, and other meteorological phenomena. It is all fairly predictable. In fact, the city has a website which tracks sea levels hourly and provides flooding forecasts.

I diligently reviewed said website (http://www.ilmeteo.it/marea.htm) early that morning. The sea was high, but not flooding high. No wellies needed, no problems. ...Wrong.

When I arrived at S Marco at noon with my customers, four terrific couples from Wake Forest, N.C., it was a silver sea with hundreds (more?) of people trapped and/or huddled on the one metre wide catwalks, called passarelle, which takes one, say, from the edge of the square into the Basilica S. Marco. Because it was 27 September only, all the passarelle were not available in the square. So civilised human behaviour was somewhat wanting as people struggled to ascend or descend a passarella.Pushing and some shoving, tempers running as high as the sea. The city says the surprise high water was due to the heavy rain of the previous 36 hours. Whatever the reason for the acqua alta, the sirens announcing the arrival of acqua alta sounded while we were on the passarelle. Two hours late.

Travellers coming here to shop in the next ten weeks or so, do not worry, shops stay open with customers and staff wearing boots should acqua alta occur; merchandise in Venice is never near the floor. Of course, you could wait the flooding out for four hours, go to a museum, have an aperitivo at Florian if you are Bill Gates, otherwise at one of the other 1000 cafès in Venice.

The net of it is that Acqua Alta is like snow: it's charming the first time only.