Worth protecting? Pretty sure we can agree on that.
May it be far from me to herald the new year with a broken string or rusty trombone, but although I have almost completely lost interest in reporting on Venice’s daily misadventures, I can’t resist this one. I should, but I can’t, because what happened seems like it ought to raise at least a chuckle. Instead, I think it’s more deserving of a resounding raspberry.
You have heard of the Great Man theory of history? I propose the unfortunate incident of January 6 as an example of the theory, yet to be named, of the phenomenon by which is is almost guaranteed that the simplest task will also prove to be the most important, and the easiest to forget at the moment of crisis. Or put it this way: If something is going wrong, the office tasked with providing measures against wrong-going will be closed for the holiday weekend, call back on Monday.
Brief context: Vast work was completed in November 2022 to encircle the basilica of San Marco with a glass wall to defend it from acqua alta. Too many years, rounded off to the nearest century, of saltwater soaks have damaged the mosaics and marble columns of the narthex, damage I have seen with my own eyes.
Although the MOSE system had finally become functional by then, the lagoon barriers were intended to be raised (it was said) only when the tide was predicted to reach 140 cm above mean sea level. It costs hundreds of thousands of euros each time to raise the floodgates, and they are only useful for a few hours, so the deciders have to decide if the expected height of the water justifies the cost. That is a very tricky calculation to make, as you can imagine.
Water outside, dry stones inside. Seems like the problem has been solved, yet this is only a temporary measure. A mastodontic project to raise the Piazza itself is being discussed, in which case the glass wall will be removed. Then again, this temporary construction may well follow the Accademia Bridge into the category of “temporary forever.”
Of course, as soon as that level was stipulated as raising-gates time there came wails and shrieks from all sides, people objecting to the (to them) unreasonably high limit. So the city rapidly backtracked, and the likely level for floodgate-raising dropped by tens; it went down to 130, then 120, then 110, then even 100. It was like an auction in reverse where the bids are decreasing. In any case it appears that the cutoff height seems to be slightly negotiable.
The Piazza San Marco stands at 85 cm above mean sea level, so it is destined to be damp even with the most modest inundations. And the basilica couldn’t be expected to tolerate small water on the stone while waiting to be protected from big water. Therefore the highly excellent idea of protecting the basilica alone was mooted, and budgeted, and scheduled, and accomplished.
Nobody thought they were ever going to see this again. This was the morning of December 11, 2008.I thought this was beautiful when I saw it, it made me think of Atlantis. But now I know better. Or worse, if you want to put it that way. Much worse.
And yet, on the morning of January 6, water rose to a mere 97 cm in the Piazza; not enough to require MOSE to be activated, by any means, but enough to drench the narthex of the basilica just as it had in 1859 (made up. Could have put 1759. 1620. 1492.) The very thing that 5 million euros had been spent to prevent just up and happened all by itself.
Because there are openings in the glass barrier wall to permit people to enter the church. Those openings must be closed with the typical metal barrier, otherwise there’s no point in having the wall. Workers (usually from the two construction companies involved) have to put up the barriers. And somebody has to tell them to do it. But if you haven’t got the workers because they’re all off duty for the holiday weekend, does it matter who is responsible for ordering all hands on deck? Of course it does.
Sensible, simple, and easy. The lower metal barrier makes the whole arrangement perfect. Amazing how ineffective the glass wall is when the metal barrier isn’t there.It’s not Hadrian’s Wall, but it’s impressive. Too bad it’s all just for show if those little metal rectangles are missing.
Not made up. The workers were absent. The person who provides for emergency interventions somehow did not check the tide forecast, even though everybody in Venice does it about ten times a day. Perhaps that person didn’t check because he/she/they were also away somewhere. In any case, for anybody to have usefully been on tide-watching duty they’d have had to be at the basilica before 6:00.
Please recall that January 6 was Epiphany, and a Saturday, so plenty of workers and employees of all sorts were probably still enjoying the Christmas holidays.
By the time that personnel at the basilica realized that nobody was coming to insert the barriers to block the tide, the church was taking on water like H.M.S. Indefatigable after striking the reef. The narthex was flooded.
Whoever left the barn door — I mean, basilica-gate — open must have spent a lively interlude in somebody’s office on Monday morning attempting to explain. Anyone listening at the door might well have heard one phrase shouted for 15 minutes: “You had ONE JOB.”
This is how it looks when all the pieces are in place. You see the entrance walkway passes neatly over the metal barrier. If the water were to rise higher, an extra metal barrier would be placed on top of the first one. Or maybe MOSE would be activated. Or something. All that’s needed is people to actually make it all happen…..“You had ONE JOB.”
I’m not going to lie: I never thought I’d see this day. Either it would never come, or by the time it did, I’d have long since turned into tera de bocal (clay for making chamberpots, as they put it here). But here we are, or more specifically, there it was this morning — the Adriatic to the right, the lagoon 70 cm lower to the left, and the vaunted MOSE floodgates ensuring for the first time that the twain shall never meet.
Years, decades, lifetimes have been devoted to constructing (and paying for) this thing, and I had little (in ErlaSpeak that means “no”) expectation that the gates would ever function. But they did. Allow me to doff my chapeau and say I’m not only astounded, but slightly weirded out. Because hearing three signals on the warning siren at 8:00 AM put all my nerves on high alert, even though we’re not in danger till four signals warn us of the possibility of the tide’s exceeding our personal domestic ground-level safe limit of 150 cm. Instead: Nothing.
I think everybody’s nerves have been a little tense, after two days of forecasts predicting an acqua alta to peak today at 135 cm above mean sea level at 12:05 PM. But at 9:00 AM (and at a mere 70 cm of rising tide) it was instead the long-discussed, -doubted, -reviled floodgates that rose, and stopped the sea at whatever the watery analogy of “in its tracks” may be. At the measuring station at the Diga Sud of the Lido the tide was at 119 cm, but the water at the Punta della Salute — bacino of San Marco, basically — was at 69 cm. When the tide turned, just after noon, it had reached 129 cm, but in the city was only a paltry 73.
This graph clearly shows the track of the tide, from its lowest point at 6:00 AM to the moment when the gates began to rise. Game, as they say, over.
We went outside to look at our canal. The water wasn’t moving. A lost pear, fallen from the fruit/vegetable boat upstream, was bobbing tranquilly in one place when it ought long since to have been carried off by the rising (or, by then, falling) tide.
Even on a normal day, the water in the canal is almost always moving at some speed, in some direction; only briefly, twice a month, does the tide pause in what is called the morte de aqua (“death of the water”). But here it was, stock still. It might as well have been in the bathtub. And so it remained until some time after the Adriatic began to withdraw; I suppose that didn’t need to be said, but perhaps someone other than myself might have forgotten that you wouldn’t lower the barrier until the sea was at least even with the level of water in the lagoon.
I didn’t used to think of 135 cm as anything more than “God, this is annoying.” But I think it’s fair to say that the doomsday inundation of November 11-12, 2019 is still too screamingly fresh in everybody’s mind to allow the casual return of “Sure, this is Venice, what do you expect?” Any tide above normal now appears potentially apocalyptic. And if our nerves were slightly on edge, so were those of the hopeful travelers who had booked hotel rooms and then, having heard early mentions of the dreaded words “acqua alta,” quickly canceled the reservations.
That’s too bad, because they missed a verifiably historic moment. And I’m glad I was here to see that pear not going anywhere in our canal.
The breakwater at San Nicolo’ on the Lido was an excellent spot for watching this epic event. This clip gives a sense of the force of the wind, always a crucial player on Team Flood Venice. This morning it was up to 41 kph (25 mph).
In case the still photograph above doesn’t convey the dynamic of what’s happening, this video from Corriere della Sera (particularly at the beginning and end of the clip) gives a glimpse of the force of the tide, as seen against the barriers as they rise, one by one. Fun fact: It took one hour and 17 minutes to raise all 78 of the gates, so the process obviously needs to start in a timely manner and not wait till the last OMG minute.
Beautiful in its way…But this is astonishingly beautiful: Noon today in the Piazza San Marco, the moment of the peak tide which ought to have covered the pavement with some 45 cm/17 inches of lagoon. The only water that dampened the stones here came from the clouds.
Note: Two videos, and all of the images with the exception of the water in the Piazza San Marco, were forwarded to me by friends via WhatsApp, so I am unable to give appropriate credit to their sources.
Via Garibaldi under the lash. The image is fuzzy because of the merciless wind and rain. A video glimpse can be found on YouTube. (ilmeteo.it)
One month ago today the Big Water (“l’Acqua Granda,” as the disaster of November 12 was immediately dubbed), struck Venice, and I hardly know where to start my report. Theoretically I could have done this sooner, but when you have had ten inches of water in your house, even temporarily, it gives new meaning to the word “aftermath,” which is now synonymous with “exhausting,” “irritating,” and “stressful.”
The videos and news reports will have long since covered the general details, but I’ve found that putting things back together after a natural disaster is an experience all of its own. I won’t say it’s worse than water in the bedroom, but it’s not a whole lot better. Profound respects to any readers who may have endured similar, but worse experiences — avalanches, eruptions, typhoons, or earthquakes. You have had it much worse. Now, back to me.
On the positive side, all this a great reason to buckle down and get rid of tons of accumulated things which had, indeed, been slowly taking over our nonexistent space. So there is that. (However, see: “tiring,” above.)
I had just arrived in Virginia on November 11, as fate would have it, and on the 12th was reveling in the first day of my annual three-week R&R, when the lagoon rose up to smite Venice. Yes, Lino had to deal with wind, water, and general desperation all on his own. This entailed getting as much as he could raised or placed as high as possible in time, as per normal, notably the books on the lowest bookshelves, and the floor-level bottom drawers of the chests in the bedroom. But “in time” was suddenly dramatically redefined.
He is a veteran of acqua alta, having lived through many lesser ones and also the famous one of 1966. But what made this one different was not only the height — 187 cm above mean sea level, which covered some 80 percent of the city to one degree or another (1966 saw 194 cm) — but the ferocious wind. It must have been something like a hurricane, because not only did it make the water rise incredibly fast, but also created crashing waves that wrought havoc all along the exposed southern edge of the city. “I was looking out the door, watching the water rising,” Lino told me; “I turned around for a second, and then all of a sudden it was in the house almost up to my knees.”
Getting the sofa up on the chairs by yourself ought to qualify as an Olympic sport. Gold medal to Lino, which he totally would have preferred not to have had to win. No photos were ever made of the water in the house — he had about a thousand other things to think about, and as many things again that he had to do. However, he did tell me that all the shoes which had been neatly put away in the space below the lowest bookshelf in the bedrooms were floating around the house, which explains the saltwater stains on them which I may or may not ever face dealing with. Ditto the bottles of detergent and household cleaning products on the floor beneath the kitchen sink. All just floating around, like so much flotsam. “Good thing the lids on the bottles were all closed tight,” he cheerfully remarked.
Naturally all this was happening at night, and naturally almost all of our electrical outlets are at floor level, so he was going through all this in the dark with no heating. (Yes, candles and flashlights were at hand.) Then, when the tide turned, he spent three hours sweeping the muddy water out of the house, then cleaning the layer of fine slime from the floor.
But he was happy about one thing; “I saved the computer! I saved the computer!” he told me on the phone, in the way people in the old days must have said “I saved the cow!” The refrigerator, though, did not survive, even though we had long since set it up on five-inch beams of wood. The washing machine is fine, though, which is a great thing because whatever clothes and towels got soaked with seawater sat there for a week, busily mildewing, till I got back.
Immediate response came in various forms. Banks suspended the usual commission for ATM transactions by non-account holders because so many cash machines were dead. Also, mortgage payments were suspended till the end of the year, which could have been really nice except that we had just made the last payment on our 15-year mortgage in October. Yep — as soon as the house was totally ours, it went under.
The old fridge, our only casualty. It’s got plenty of company out and about; there are so many appliances to be hauled away that the trash-collection agency says they’ll get to us around January 15. They say they don’t have enough boats to do more.
Our only tangible loss was the 300-euro refrigerator, so not only can we not complain, there isn’t much point in running the bureaucratic obstacle course for potential reimbursement for that. Those for whom there is a point would be businesses whose power tools are kaput, for example, or the young couple at Osteria di Valentino. Of course they had already installed their appliances up to safety at 140 cm, but 47 additional centimeters (18 inches) inflicted damage worth 40,000 euros: two large refrigerators, a large freezer, the dishwasher, the deep fryer…
But at least their fryer was empty. The trattoria up the street hadn’t emptied the oil from their fryer in time, and the pressure of the water busted some valve and out came all the oil. So the owner had water, mud, AND oil on his floor.
Not to worry! He went to buy some big bags of sawdust, the time-honored medium for glop removal. Not only were there none to be found (everybody got there first?), sawdust is now forbidden, he was told, in places where food is being prepared because the eponymous dust might contaminate the food. “I’ve used sawdust for 30 years!” he said. Well, that was then. Now we know better?
The waves broke down part of the wall at the Giardini vaporetto stop, not only by the dock but also further along. The southern-facing side of the city got it in the teeth. At the Zattere, an entire newsstand kiosk was blown into the water (since hauled up to great applause.)That must have been some wave.
Further along the waterfront by the Giardini.The violence of the wind and waves tore some of the gangways away from their docks. The docks at Sant’ Elena have been like this since Nov. 12; the vaporettos currently use a nearby dock. The dock at the Arsenal is similarly out of service, and part of the Giardini dock is missing the gangway, so we use one for going and coming. No telling how long this will last.The Sant’ Elena dock has just been left like this till they can get around to repairs. This gives a small idea of the chaos of that night. A small anecdote: A naval officer at the Morosini naval school and his wife were trying to get back to Sant’ Elena from some mainland errand. He told me that they waited fruitlessly at Santa Marta for longer than usual, not quite realizing the dimensions of the hecatomb taking place slightly eastward. Or maybe they were just hoping that transport could somehow keep functioning. No vaporetto appeared, so eventually they hailed a passing water taxi. “We were going along the Giudecca Canal, but the wind was unbelievable,” he told me. “The taxi, even at full speed, wasn’t moving forward at all. We were just staying in one place and finally he turned around and took us to the nearest point and put us ashore. He didn’t even charge us anything.” (They walked home.) I heard several people referring to how the taxi drivers were out and about, helping people in trouble for free. This is worth noting in a city that seems to live according to the motto “Every man for himself.”As I mentioned, wind. They got this tree chopped up really fast, but the stump with roots is still there.Even the little trees at Sant’ Elena got blown nearly flat. Now they’re at least standing up.Even stretches of the wall-less embankment at Sant’ Elena show signs of serious wear. If you follow the crack to the top of the image, you see that it had already given signs of giving way. Any time that a previous repair looks about to break, you’d better start over. But I’ll bet they just throw more grout, or whatever it is, in the cracks.Wind drove the waves into various glass windows — the Cassa di Risparmio (Savings Bank) got the hit on the Riva dei Sette Martiri.
Evidently the bank’s glass door was destroyed, so a substitute was rigged up. Needless to say, the ATM machine was drowned, as were the other two in the neighborhood.Speaking of ATM’s, this one simply says “Fuori servizio” (out of service.) It still is. We’ve been going to the Lido to use a cash machine.Speaking of the Lido, I lugged a suitcase full of damp laundry to the laundromat on the Lido to dry it because the newish laundromat in via Garibaldi took a hit right in the dryers. The three washing machines, set up on the purple concrete platform, survived the inundation, but the two dryers in the back were, as they say, toast. The piece of paper on the glass door says “Guaste” — busted. Ruined. At least a week went by before the owner could get the man in to replace or repair the motors (or whatever). Last week one of the two was working, but extremely unwillingly. Loud screeching noises, and only tepid temperature. But I would never have said anything — I have to give the guy credit for getting them working even a little.Maskmaker Carlo Setti’s little shop in Frezzeria didn’t have much defense, considering that it’s already two steps down from street level.This shop just around the corner from Carlo sells expensive, elegant fashion, but even being two steps up didn’t save it from doom.Fancy dresses are one thing, but expensive lumber is quite another. The gondola-maker at the squero of San Trovaso lost some of his valuable long-seasoned wood; it just floated away before he could get to it.A lot of the wood is stored behind the squero, where it looks to the ignorant eye like just a batch of old wood somebody threw out. Somebody didn’t, and somebody would really, really like to have it back.There were two more exceptional high tides the week of the catastrophe, and then several “normal” high tides followed. at varying depths. The thing about normal acqua alta isn’t only that you have to put on your boots (which can’t possibly be regarded as a big deal), but that the water brings detritus ashore, then leaves it behind. This is just outside our front door.I saw clumps and hanks of eelgrass (Zostera marina), left by the retreating tide, bestrewing the streets, often fairly far from the nearest canal.On Fondamenta San Giuseppe there are three street-level houses side by side which demonstrate a certain primitive evolution in dealing with water at the front door. The dwellings with steps are generally said to have a “piano rialzato,” or raised level. It’s easy to see how even a few steps could make a difference, at least up to a certain height, which is our case. After which, oh well.Just some of the nearby castoffs. A washing machine on the left (A), and on the right, a dark small stove and a small white refrigerator (B). I’m imagining that person A invited neighbor B to come over to cook their dinner in exchange for being permitted to go wash some clothes.I saw so many soggy mattresses. Does everybody sleep on the ground floor? Anyway, our bed escaped because we did something smart, years ago, putting it up on big plastic supports. But I wasn’t anticipating acqua alta, I was just trying to create more storage space.
A street behind our place. I wonder how long it will be before the wall dries out, if ever.The front door to the building where Lino was born and grew up. It’s still swollen and doesn’t shut completely, which is a situation you really don’t want in a front door.A veteran of many high tides, and devoted to his hipwaders.These boots have lived quite a life. By now they probably wish he’d leave them alone and let them leak in peace.When the high water isn’t catastrophic, you can easily see that it’s not distributed evenly. The edge of this fondamenta illustrates the situation.I’m used to this by now, but I still notice that it does me absolutely no good where I’m standing to see that the street up ahead is dry.As you see, even just a little water is annoying when it’s in the wrong place.I’d never noticed how many drains were sliced into the pavement on via Garibaldi till I saw how much water had come up and gone down. Of course you want drains to carry the water away, it’s just a little irksome that they also let it come up.Some bright spark salvaged a tree branch, which was a good thing because it could have been a hazard in the water. It looks quite fine as a supplementary barrier. One might almost imagine it to have been some work of art from the Biennale.And in Calle Lunga San Barnaba, in ever-so-fashionable Dorsoduro, the owner of this upscale eyeglass shop was especially witty. I notice the quip is written in English, for foreign consumption. You could translate this into Italian, or Venetian, but I’m not sure that the locals would have found it to be especially humorous.Even more than seeing flowers in spring or golden retriever puppies, any new appliance now makes me feel that life will go on.Big fat delivery boats bringing succor and new consumer durables is a happy, and frequent, sight. It’s a bumper holiday season for the warehouses and the delivery people.Every time a new washing machine is delivered, an angel gets its wings.
And speaking of damage, I took a walk along the Riva degli Schiavoni this morning. The damage from the waves is ugly, extensive, and probably will be here for quite a while. I suppose there is a Plan being devised as to the order and importance of interventions, but by the look of it at the moment, people are already getting used to things this way. Maybe we’ll find ourselves like those unfortunate earthquake survivors who are living in containers five years after the last aftershock. Or maybe five minutes before the next quake. Not sure how the thought process works.
The Arsenale vaporetto stop, even more than the one at Sant’ Elena, is lying there like a victim of a 20-car pileup on the highway, resting on a gurney in the Emergency Room at a permanent Priority 4 level while more desperate cases are moved forward.This is undoubtedly a spot where a vaporetto was hurled by thrashing waves against the nearest immovable object. This being an area where vaporettos are normally tied up for the night, that seems the most likely scenario.Wow.Moving west toward San Marco, there is this relic of some tremendous impact. I wonder what the vessel that did this looks like.Toward the Danieli hotel, the storm has beaten the balustrade to the ground.The former balustrade is in several large pieces, and the line of white squares is the only sign of the balusters, now gone somewhere.Another balustrade has bitten the dust.I have the distinct impression that this part of the Riva degli Schiavoni, in front of the statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II, is now sliding toward the water. The fanlike shape of the dark area left by the waves is only one indication — standing there, you can pretty much see it.The two docks at San Zaccaria are gone. I don’t know what’s being done with them, but they have left a very strange open space.
Prompt announcements of municipal reimbursements for damage caused some excitement: 5,000 euros to private citizens, 20,000 euros to businesses! But happy visions of the city councilors handing out bags of cash have been dashed.
Let’s say the funds are there, which I don’t actually know. What I do know is that there are too many problems and tempers are rising. The deadline for claims is too short (December 20), there is intense confusion on how to complete the claim forms, wrong information is being given out, what receipts are required, what sort of experts (too few, anyway) are able to prepare the necessary estimates on repairs and replacements. It’s turned into a sort of bureaucratic high tide all on its own. Of 2,900 claims submitted so far, only one in three has met the criteria for approval. And who can say when the reimbursement would finally be made? Some people who are owed money from disasters of various sorts from years ago are still waiting for the check. Or bag of cash, or whatever. I realize that frivolous and exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims are not to be encouraged, but creating problems while attempting to solve problems doesn’t sound like progress to me.
The Coop supermarket posted this very heartwarming notice in the store. I translate: “Venetians, we’re here. We have decided to gather funds for the emergency: Everyone can collaborate by choosing Coop products. Thanks to the solidarity of the Coop stores of all Italy, one percent of the sales of our trademarked products will be donated to the support of the population hurt by the high water, for a sum of at least 500,000 euros. GOOD SHOPPING CAN HELP VENICE.” This is heartwarming, and I should mention that the Prix supermarket chain has launched a similar initiative. But I have no idea how these things actually work, beyond the hot flash it gives you of feeling like you can do something to help out. (Apart from the incongruity of a Venetian, who perhaps has suffered in the disaster, going to spend money at the Coop in order to help Venetians.)
The once-terrifying snaggly old crones are becoming cuter by the year. It’s almost like a competition by now, and if it keeps up like this the Befana is going to end up looking like a golden retriever puppy.
January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany, which puts an end to the Christmas holidays (which seem to have begun in late August) by the sugar-laden nocturnal passage of the Befana. At some point in history, someone — probably two years old — mangled the word “Epiphany” and it became Befana (beh-FAH-nah) and so she has remained.
I entertain myself in two ways during this interlude.
The first is by conducting a completely unofficial census of the Befane that I see in bars, cafe’s, even supermarkets. There are so many of them you’d think that January 7 was officially going to be Take-a-Hag-to-Work day.
Would you accept candy from these women? Of course you would.This Befana hasn’t fully evolved from her original terrifying stage. But she’s on the right track.This is what the Ur-Befana is supposed to look like. That’s what makes her generosity with candy so wonderful — she looks like somebody who’d rather leave you some barbed wire. If the Befana is softened to the point of resembling your favorite stuffed toy, the essential frisson is lost.And speaking of candy, the tradition is that if you’ve been a bad little person, she will leave coal in your stocking. Some blithe spirit, excited by having been able to make candy that looks like coal (carbone) has lost the plot because this year we now also have fake polenta and cheese. What child has ever been threatened with polenta or cheese for having been bad? If you must be creative, at least make the fake candy look like something unnerving — fried fruit bat, maybe, or jellied moose nose.
The second way in which I entertain myself in this period is by admiring the underpinnings of the lagoon, as revealed during the exceptional low tides which always occur about now. This is the completely predictable and normal phenomenon of late December-early January, and the exposed mudbanks are the seche de la marantega berola (the mudbanks of the little old Epiphany hag). The newspaper sometimes runs a big photo with an overwrought caption that leads the uninitiated to think that the world has come to an end. Venice without water in the canals? Man the lifeboats! Oh wait — there isn’t enough water to float them. While it’s easy to imagine the inconvenience caused by acqua alta, not many people (I suppose) pause to imagine the inconvenience inflicted by not enough water.
Or let’s say there’s enough water, technically speaking. But the distance between our moored boat and the edge of the fondamenta is so great that we either have to plan ahead and bring a ladder (made up, I’ve never seen this), or just schedule our activities in a different sequence. There have been plenty of times we’d have gone out rowing, but the prospect of having to disembark when the water is 21 inches below the normal mean level just spoils the whole idea.
As you see. Actually, plenty of people drive a big nail into the wall as a primitive but effective step up. We keep meaning to do it, but so far sloth has overcome good intentions.
But never fear. The tide will return to its normal levels, and the Befana will be back next year. I promise.
Even with your eyes closed you can easily tell that the tide was extremely low yesterday afternoon — all you have to do it walk up or down the gangway at the vaporetto dock. It may not look like it, but this was definitely a 45-degree angle, and if you were pushing someone in a wheelchair you’d definitely have to call for reinforcements.Up until two days ago I’d never seen mud in the Bacino Orseolo. Just pull your gondola up on the beach and have a barbecue.People sometimes ask me how deep the water is in the canals. I always inquire, “When the tide is in, or when it’s out?” You can see the range of options here on this exposed wall (the exposed bottom is also impressive, in its way. I’d certainly never seen it till two days ago). The lower, uniformly brown stretch of wall is almost always underwater. The upper layer is covered with green algae which flourishes with intermittent dunkings and dryings as the tide rises and falls.Yes, there is this moment at the turn of the year which makes one almost long for acqua alta. Do not quote me.
