Last night we were rushed out of the hotel for an emergency evacuation at midnight after the alarms in our giant hotel in the middle of rural Venice went off. It seems that someone accidently pulled the alarm. Sure they did. By accident. Right. Who does that?!

Around 4am my dreams produced some shaking action that I couldn’t explain and when i partially woke I called out “earthquake” to Josh and though my mouth knew I don’t think it registered right in my head but we jumped out of bed and basically repeated the same steps as our earlier evacuation practice. Grab jeans, purse…. oh crap I have to pee. So, I did. Right then and there, as the hotel shook, or so I recalled. Josh confirms my recollection that it was still shaking when I made this odd decision and just as we were goingto leave the room we realized it stopped and we could probably stay put. People from Alberta are maybe a bit clueless of what to do in the event of a quake, and we defenitely were. Nonetheless, my hotel choice was confirmed to be an alright one.

After the earthquake this morning, I read this in article from the BBC which reads “Britain’s David Trew, who is staying in a hotel in Ferrara, told the BBC: “I was sound asleep when the tremors started. I was having quite a vivid dream, and the first few seconds of the quake became part of the dream. As I began to wake up it took me a few seconds to realise that it was actually happening for real. I fumbled around in the darkness, now very scared. The room was shaking violently,”

Exactly. Completely and exactly as this guy said it. It was a violent shaking, and the whole bed was moving. It felt very unreal and so strange. It really was a good series of shaking and jolting, lasting maybe a minute or more (long enough to wake, leave the bed and pee), but nothing like the little rumbler we felt in Mexico in 2010 which was only a 2.4 and quite far away.

This one was a 6.1 and then a 5.2 which we also felt and woke up briefly for, followed by dozens of aftershocks which were too small to feel from our 130 km away. Josh says “well, we were bound to be caught up in an earthquake one of these days”. Sheesh.

Thank goodness for my trusty earthquake app, which I’ve had for a year or more, just in case. That way, I know where they are happening, how big and if there are any Tsunami warnings, or impending hurricanes or exploding volcanoes (if I’m lucky enough to have wifi of course) because it seems that we are once again, travelling crap magnets.