Our most recent cruise was due to leave from Venice cruise terminal. I decided to splurge on a nice hotel on the island of Murano since there were direct boats from the airport to Murano as well as from Murano to the cruise terminal. Allowing us to arrive in style. This was the first cruise we were taking with Little Person, so we were keen to introduce her to one of our favourite ways to travel around Europe.
Leaving England went smoothly and we were on our way to Venice airport. It was October and we were told by the captain that there was some bad weather around Venice and we might be in for a rough landing. He wasn’t lying and we had a little bit of a rollercoaster getting onto the ground.
After collecting our luggage we proceeded to the ferry port where we were told that The Lagoon had been closed due to the amount of rain that had been recorded over the last day. As such no ferries were running to get to the Venetian islands. The desk at the airport recommended getting a bus to Piazzale Roma, located next to the train station and then proceeding to Murano from there.
Once we got to Piazzale Roma, we crossed the bridge to the train station and found that quite a lot of the areas around were underwater.
We had quite a lot of luggage at this point as well as Little Person so getting to the correct ferry stop to get to Murano didn’t seem like it would be possible. The only way of getting around required walking over thin raised platforms or wading through the water. Furthermore we could not even verify that the ferries would still be running since by this time it was midnight.
I started looking around for a hotel that was still dry and was accessible from our location and was unable to find anything that still had room.
In the end I was only able to find something back in Mestre back on the mainland which required us to get another bus.
We finally got on this bus, and following the google directions, got off the bus, walked through a construction site and finally arrived at the hotel, completely exhausted.
The next day we were able to board the cruise successfully and had the time to see the extent of the flooding around Venice. We got refunds for the hotel and the ferry trips but this clearly did not compensate for our experience in a flooded Venice in the middle of the night.
If I was to consider doing any part of this again, I would recommend against arriving at night time for any hotel that requires you to take a boat to access it. Arriving during daylight hours gives you more time to work out what you are doing and increases the resources available to help you.
We are not keen to return to Venice since we have visited successfully before and have also heard other people’s horror stories of their visits. It is definitely somewhere you should aim to go once, but timing of the visit is very important, reducing risk of bad weather as well as crowds.
