Your travel4seniors.com editor last visited Venice several years ago. It was an unhappy surprise one afternoon when the popular St. Mark’s Square was suddenly flooded with a foot of water from a tidal surge of the Venetian Canal.

There were raised wooden platforms along one side to allow some walking, but getting around was difficult. Aqua alta days are increasing, from ten in the 1990s to 60 last year. Therefore, if Venice is on your bucket list, book a visit or you may have to come prepared with a bucket.

Longfellow may have predicted the problem in his poem about Venice:
White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest…
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.