When in Venice… one must of course go on a gondola ride! My friend and I overlapped in this unbelievable city of dreams for only a morning, so that was definitely the one thing we wanted to do. After all, we were in Venice! But more about that later… the thing that happened after our amazing and ridiculous gondola ride (did I mention, more on this later), might have been even more spectacular.

We left on our gondola ride from St. Mark’s Square. Everything was normal. But when we came back, we couldn’t believe our eyes. What was a normal plaza just about half an hour earlier was now completely flooded!

We didn’t know whether to panic, but everybody else seemed to be going about their business… This shopkeeper was acting normal as water was going into his store…

This girl in a gorgeous red dress was taking advantage of the situations and taking some amazing engagement photos… Going to be hard to beat these…

They were even selling these incredible water shoes to go over shoes and pants, which made things pretty fun…

Meanwhile, there were high up planks for tourists waiting to go sightsee the church. We actually saw these all throughout the city on our walk to St. Mark’s Square, but had no idea what they were for. Now we knew…

It was such a ridiculous and unexpected thing for us, we couldn’t stop laughing the whole time…

I later learned (thanks Twitter!) that this is called Acqua Alta and is a normal seasonal phenomenon in Venice.

“The phenomenon occurs mainly between autumn and spring, when the astronomical tides are reinforced by the prevailing seasonal winds which hamper the usual reflux. The main winds involved are the sirocco, which blows northbound along the Adriatic Sea, and the bora, which has a specific local effect due to the shape and location of the Venetian lagoon.”

I personally opted in for climbing the high clock tower at that time… The high water made me a bit uncomfortable despite everyone else acting like it was just completely normal…

But as I climbed down, the casual flooding was still there…

When I came back to the plaza later in the day, there was no trace of this crazy phenomenon… I had to check that it was real and not some phenomenal dream that is definitely one of the top experiences of my life.