11/11/12 7:30am - As I write this quick update I’m sitting in Venice/Mestre railway station, one of two stations for Venice. This one is on the mainland while Venice/San Lucia is in Venice proper. I'm waiting to catch the train to Milan (scheduled to leave at 10:02am) and there onto Naples. The reason for this quick update is because of what is happening in Venice this morning. You may have heard of Venice’s notorious floods which occur from time to time. These occur in winter and are caused by the intersection of weather and tide. There was a flood in Venice several weeks ago but this morning there is an even larger flood tide, estimated to reach 1.2-1.3 meters above normal high tide. The owner of my hotel let me know about this when I arrived so I planned on getting away early at about 6:00am as the peak tide was predicted to occur at 8:30am. However, when I got downstairs at 5:45am this morning there was already ankle deep water (6 inches or so) outside the door. He night porter had fitted a metal barrier across the door and a pump under the floor in the doorway was pumping water back out. The owner had said this works so long as the flood is around 1 meter but anything above that and water floods the hotel. The problem is that the water doesn’t just come over the doorway it also comes up through the floor. This is because Venice is built on a swamp – the buildings sit on wooden piles driven deep into the ground to stop them from sinking, which they still are slowly doing – and the ground is porous. So, when a flood tide occurs, the water comes up through the soil and the floors as well as over land. Apparently, there’s nothing you can do about it; you just have to accept that it will happen and deal with it. You may have seen pictures of raised trestle walkways for people to get around on – well, those are out this morning and I had to use them briefly to get to the water bus stop to get out of Venice. The good news (?) is that by mid-day the water should have returned to normal levels again and everyone can go about business as usual after cleaning up. But to get out of the hotel I had to borrow some boots from the night porter who then helped me carry my bags to dry ground from where I could make my way (using the trestles as necessary) to the dock. The two pictures below will give you some idea of what’s happened. The first shows my hotel entrance in the distance (the Doni) with the water at more or less normal levels; the second was taken this morning at about 6:00am from the spot where I reached dry ground with the night porter and the water is already about 6 inches deep.

Anyway, off to Naples shortly.

Doc

This picture was taken yesterday afternoon. You can clearly see the footpath and if you look at the steps about six of them are exposed (two are hidden). The woman on the footpath is at the hotel door.

I took this picture after carrying my luggage from the hotel (the light high on the wall) this morning at about 6:50am. The water is already about 6 inches deep as measured by putting my hand in. There are still about 2.5 hours to high tide at this point.

1:30pm-OK, I’m back blogging in real time. I’m on the train from Milan to Naples and this thing is AMAZING. I thought the train from Venice to Milan was something – it’s called the Frecciablanco and we hit about 200km/h at times. But as I write this the train I’m on – the Frecciarossa_ is running at 283 km/h and still accelerating, according to my GPS. It has leather seats with electronic recline, wi-fi if you want it, free drinks and snacks bought to your seat, and the train leans as it goes round corners. WOW, now both the train and my GPS confirm that we are doing 300 km/h – granted we are doing this on dedicated high speed rail lines but hey, 300km is 300km. What is even more incredible is that the French have a train that will do over 350 km/h and the Italians have just announced they have a train that can reach 400 km/h and is compatible with all high speed lines in Europe. This really is the way to travel – you get to see the countryside, you can get up and walk around any time you want, there’s a restaurant and bar in the next coach and real toilet facilities with room to turn around. Sigh!!! Why oh why don’t we have this in the US is beyond me.

Doc

The inside of the coach on today's train to Naples. I'm sitting the third seat back on the right.

Update on the Venice flooding: I just checked the online news and the flooding today reach the sixth highest level on record at 1.49 meters, which floods about 70% of the city. There are some pretty dramatic pictures online if you surf around. Here's links to two site:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/11/4977243/wind-whipped-rains-lift-venice.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/3538914/Venice-under-five-feet-of-water-as-the-city-suffers-its-worst-floods-in-22-years.html

I think I'm glad to have left when I did, although part of me says it would have been interesting to see.