November 13, 2012

Flooded city...

... as tourist attraction. 

(I can't believe these tourists who are smilingly swimming in the flood waters of St. Mark's Square. I guess it's not too cold, but how can water flowing over city streets, sidewalks, and canals be clean and safe?)

30 comments:

Craig said...

Bet it's high and dry on the Bridge of Sighs.

Oso Negro said...

It can't. Floodwater is nasty stuff.

Anonymous said...

St Marks floods every full moon.

and you are correct, to swim in a canal, begs 10 different illnesses. Venice in the day had no sewage treatment plant, but had indoor plumbing. You figure it out.

Levi Starks said...

Obviously you've never seen anyone swimming in the river Ganges, and they drink it too...

ricpic said...

I read an interview with a Venetian shopkeeper, who has to live with her shop being flooded on a regular basis, and she apparently has to do a disinfectant scrubbing and wash of her shop not once but twice after every flood. Incredible, the capacity to adjust.

Lyssa said...

Yes, this seems disgusting.

My smaller and less dirty city suffered some minor flooding a few years back, and I wound up having walk through ankle/shin deep water (I hoped it would get better, but it just got worse, so I finally took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and went with it) for several blocks. It was absolutely the most disgusting thing I'd ever experienced.

edutcher said...

These are the same people who walked out on the exposed beach when the ocean went away.

(were they surprised by that tidal wave)

Bob_R said...

Come for the architecture, stay for the dysentery.

Bryan C said...

That's what immune systems are for.

Mary Martha said...

Venetian canal water is famously disgusting.

Katherine Hepburn fell in for a movie and contracted a terrible eye infection.

The canals just feel like giant petri dishes which have been growing all sorts of nastyness for centuries. Ick.

test said...

To me the shocker was people with permanently flooded first floors in their homes. Beautiful structures hundreds and possibly a thousand years old, sinking. Meanwhile people still living in them, using dinghies to get to the nearest pier.

But when I was there you could walk to San Marcos without wading. I wonder if those homes are flooded into the second level now.

Tim said...

"I can't believe these tourists who are smilingly swimming in the flood waters of St. Mark's Square. I guess it's not too cold, but how can water flowing over city streets, sidewalks, and canals be clean and safe?"

I can.

Aren't the results of last week absolute confirmation that people are stupid?

So, why wouldn't they do this?

shiloh said...

As long as the pigeons at San Marco square are ok. Venetia has a certain ambiance/joie de vivre!

When it's underwater, not so much. Much nicer in the summertime, go figure ...

MadisonMan said...

Dilution only gets you so far. But we don't see the rashes and diarrhea a couple days later because that's not news.

Clyde said...

Darn it! Didn't Barack Obama promise to slow the rise of the oceans?

He's been out playing golf instead, hasn't he?

Michael K said...

They probably ran to take a couple of showers after the photo shoot finished.

alan markus said...

I'm impressed that in almost all of the 29 pictures, just about everybody is smiling. No one looks too stressed about it - a certain acceptance that life goes on despite this inconvenience.

edutcher said...

shiloh said...

As long as the pigeons at San Marco square are ok. Venetia has a certain ambiance/joie de vivre!

When it's underwater, not so much. Much nicer in the summertime, go figure ...


i hear it stinks then, just like our little weasel, so where were you hiding out 10/5 - 11/5 when the Romster was winning?.

Schistosomiasis inspector at the Doge's Palace?

Known Unknown said...

Life is not clean and safe.

kimsch said...

I don't know how warm it is. Many people are dressed in winter coats and scarves.

Would the floodwaters be a bit different with salt water? Can the salt do some disinfecting itself?

Unknown said...

I'm reading this looking out the window at snow coming down. It sounds bone chilling and not fun at all.

Ann Althouse said...

"Life is not clean and safe."

Yes, but these are tourists. They chose to come here and do this. They are smiling about it and going in deeper.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Life is not clean and safe.

Agreed. AND to willingly swim in sewage is stupid. Proving Tim's point.

This is also why we call those stupid, wide eyed, naive city people who come up to the wilderness and get lost in the forests, attacked by bears, stranded on the sides of glacier clad mountains during snow storms in January [I could go on with examples]......Tourons.

Tourons = moronic tourists.

madAsHell said...

Venice!?!
The place stinks of sewage even without the flooding.

About 10 years ago, they were building a flood gate. I guess we know how that worked out.

Matt Sablan said...

Reminds me of people who go to run with bulls. Some people just want a little excitement and plague in their life. Mainly the excitement, but also the plague. Sort of a two-for-one deal, really.

shiloh said...

For the record, Althouse #1 doting, trained seal makes me smile ... so his 24/7 childish obsession w/me isn't a total loss! :)

Irene said...

This happens every November, although it is worse this year.

The greatest danger, I think, occurs when someone is walking along a flooded sidewalk, and doesn't recognize where the sidewalk ends and the canal begins.

Photos 3, 8, 26, and 27 best illustrate that threat.

Known Unknown said...

They are smiling about it and going in deeper.

That's what she said.

chickelit said...

Venice thrives on tourism. Why begrudge them? Should they all just stay home?

Jeff Hall said...

If the water was clean enough for Napoleon and Thomas Mann, it's clean enough for tourists.