Wet Socks and wet feet

One of my biggest pet peeves is walking around with wet socks. I'm walking around in warm socks and all of a sudden, I accidentally step on a section somewhere on the floor that's wet. Ugh. It just feels so weird and very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately this was taken to a new level over the weekend in Venice.

First off, Venice is beautiful. After talking all sorts of transportation to get there: train, walk, train, bus, plane, bus, and finally water taxi, it was a pretty impressive sight to see a city like Venice for the first time. It was just like scenes from the movie: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but better! Our hotel was near St. Mark's Square, so seeing the square and St. Mark's Basilica for the first time was pretty amazing. The square was completely empty since we arrived around 1am and it was all lit up with Christmas lights. Quite a scene.

After settling in one of the smallest hotel rooms for 3 people I've ever seen, we tried to find a place to party. A bar, restaurant, even a club. But alas, this is the city of romance and even the guide books say that the party scene is slim to none. So unfortunately, our Friday night alcohol binge was postponed until the next day.

Midway through the night I heard loud air raid sirens. If I remembered correctly in my guide book, this meant high tides and flooding! But I ignored it and went back to sleep.

But my memory served me correctly the next morning as our hotel lobby was flooded! In fact, most of the city was flooded, at least knee high!

There were two options to take on the flooding. Buy a cheap pair of pseudo water proof boots that pretty much looked like garbage bags that covered your shoes. Or buy galoshes/boots. I decided to go for both.

I would buy the galoshes and use the garbage bag shoes to cover them since they covered a higher part of my lower leg than the boots. I was invincible.

My other coworker decided to do the same thing. We were going to brave the high water and walk into St. Mark's Square and take amazing pictures while keeping our feet dry and warm.

We were wrong.

St. Mark's Square was about a hundred meters away from the front steps of our hotel. Maybe less.

At first I was splashing through the water like a little kid. But, not even halfway to the square the water was way too high for my boot / plastic bag combination.

"I'm breached!" I yelled. We both were.

Water had penetrated through. I spend money on new boots and its whole purpose to keep my feet and socks dry had failed. The water was soooo cold.

I didn't even want to think about how clean or dirty this water was that had entered the inside of my boots.

We made it to the square, found a section of tables and chairs and climbed up the chairs and tables to admire the site of a flooded square. Quite an unbelievable sight.

I was bold enough to stand on top of a table and balance on one leg to empty my water filled boots. My coworker had his digital SLR all ready to take that magical moment of me falling backwards into the water.

Luckily I didn't. He took 3 or 4 pics of me of my balancing act which I hope to get from him soon!

Unfortunately I sucked it up and spent the whole day in wet socks and wet feet. It wasn't the most comfortable feeling. At the end of the day you won't believe how hard I scrubbed and washed my lower legs and feet. Ugh.

Overall, the weekend was a blast. Great stories. Great experience with the floods and I only hope to return one day to take that gondola ride under the bridge of Sighs with that significant other.. =)

I shall post pics soon!

Language
The hotel staff consisted of filipinas that worked in the hotel restaurant. What was cool was that they were speaking Italian! How cool was that?!? I busted out some Tagalog and they hooked us up with "extra" breakfast!

Two weeks
In about two weeks I'll be at home! Again, for anybody reading this, if there's anything you want from the UK, let me know!