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Allora! Venice Is Flooding, So Check Your Hotel Rezzies

Where: Venice, Italy
November 13, 2012 at 5:12 PM | by | Comments (0)

We’ve been hearing it forever—Venice is sinking. Well, right now it certainly is…wet. The city is enduring the Acqua Alta, aka the period when higher than normal water levels rise over the city, causing the lagoon's water to overflow over the canals and flood the walkways.

When it does happen, it's usually between the months of October through December when high tides affect Venice thanks to strong southerly winds and heavy rain. The resulting rising waters causes more than half of the city's low-lying cafes, shops and hotels to become a water-logged. This year, it has brought the sixth-highest tide in 150 years.

We’ve visited Venice in October and managed to dodge the Aqua Alta, but we packed a pair of rainboots just in case the weather gods decided to bring the rain and the funk (the canals, that act like sewer systems, can get quite pungent).

So what does this mean for people already in Italy, or who've made plans to visit Venice soon?

Our Advice: Check With Your Hotel
You need to know if there’s flooding in your hotel's lobby. And if you don't know the location of your property in conjunction to the seriously flooded streets and piazzas, it's time to find out. Ask whether the makeshift bridges to cross St. Mark's Square are holding up. As one hotelier, whose entrance is flooded, told the Sydney Morning Herald:

"this is not clean water — you need to mop with disinfectant twice after it goes down."

Decide if you’re going to say “screw it all” and make the best out of another one of Mother Nature’s jokes (she and Sandy must be having serious gigglefits right now). This is the time where some road warries may rethink their stance on traveler's insurance and others (like our first pic) will just literally go with the flow.

We're still waiting to hear from the big hotels in Venice, namely, the Hotel Cipriani, the Hilton Molino Stucky, and The Hotel Danieli, and find out if all is well there. Most we've heard so far has just been flooding in the lobbies.

Emails and calls from these high-profile hotels have not been returned as of press time.

[Photos:AP Photo/Luigi Costantini/Orient-Express Hotels]

Hotels mentioned in this story

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