Events in Venice

"...But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons sucking 
at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town: 
crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and 
round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the 
time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for 
any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress. 

Thus it floated me away (...) I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this 
strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, 
and if its name be VENICE." Charles Dickens 'Pictures from Italy' - 1846