Leaving Venice

 

Tourist encounter on the Gondola

We started our morning with our gondola cruise. The sun was out, the winds had calmed, it was about 50 degrees. Mary fell into the gondola and hurt her back. She would spend 6 days in bed, healing. We had 10 gondolas between us and a guitarist and singer accompanied us as we boated through some of the smaller canals, lots of tourists took pictures of us.

We had a lecture on the MOSE Project in a decommissioned church with a Titian painting of Jon the Baptist over the altar. The project raises 78 gates across the entrance to the lagoon to prevent flooding. In November 1966, St. Mark’s had a flood of 6 ½ feet. Since then, the number of floods over 1 meter has risen exponentially. Since October 2020, the gates have been closed over 60 times at a cost of 200K euros each time. Manmade causes include draining swamps for industrial sites, building with concrete, and deepening canals which changed the flow of sand from the rivers.  Because of the gates, we couldn’t board our ship in Venice.

Flood on St. Mark's Square

We took a bus to reach our ship outside of Ravenna at the port of Corsini. We had lunch in Comacchio, known as the little Venice. Then we passed through the delta of the Po River. This is a sanctuary for birds, especially flamingos, because of the brackish water. 

Comacchio bridge

That night after the Captain's Dinner, we were entertained by the DeLiscious Orchestra with music from the Romanga region.