Friday 2 June 2017 Pisa and the Pickpocket
Arrived in Pisa about 3pm. The plan being catch the bus to the tower and back by 5pm at the latest and head back to Rome, maybe back by 8:30pm. Best laid plans and all that.
Purchased tickets from the railway station newsagent. On the bus, 10 minutes later at a market place and the driver says tower. Damned if we could see the tower, just a market and a big stone wall, no signs. Time to check Google maps. Ah its behind the stone wall.
The markets are souvenir stalls and there are a lot of African migrants trying to sell you stuff. Admittedly their everywhere there are tourist attractions, just like MacDonald’s.
Walk through the gate in the wall and there it is. There’s a lot of people but a lot of open space. There’s a Baptistery, a Cathedral and the Tower. And it’s all just about finished being cleaned.
Dea said I could go and climb the tower. So off to go buy a ticket. My allocated time to climb was going to be 6pm. We had planned to be halfway home by then so no climbing.
Bought tickets to see the Cathedral and the Baptistery. I don’t have a lot of time for religion, respect those that do, but I do like old building including churches.
Time to go, but Dea needs a toilet and the only one appears to be in MacDonalds. But you have to buy something to get a code to open the door. Macca’s is everywhere near tourist attractions, good marketing sense but does kind of detract from the heritage of a place.
Off to the bus stop. I’m still having trouble with which side of the road the bus will stop and which way to look for traffic when crossing the road. The bus turns up and I get the tickets out of my wallet ready to show the driver, but so many people are getting on the bus he’s not bothered. Have to stand and hang on to the roof rail for stability as the route is windie and bumpy.
Arrive back at the train station ready to pay for a ticket back to Rome.
NO WALLET
There was over €200, a credit card, a money travel card, SA drivers license and a photo of Deanne at our wedding in it.
Now what. Report it to the police. Theres plenty of security at the railway station, armed soldiers everywhere. Ask one of them, police station inside the station. Good this’ll be quick. The train station police are not able to deal with this situation I have to go to the main police station in Pisa. Catch a taxi to the police station in some side street out of the way and make my report. Not a lot of interest, but I suppose it happens all the time.
Cancel the cards. Should be able to do this on my phone the CommBank app says. I could do the money card but not the MasterCard (at this time, ring this number). Great my sim is getting low. After 10 mins identifying myself, the guy at the other end says he’ll ring me back. What’s the Global Sim number. More time wasted trying figure that out. He rings me back in 10 mins and explain what needs to happen. My cards have not been accessed, good. I’ll need a temporary MasterCard from MasterCard International. He puts me through. New guy not easy to understand but I have to go through my story again. Another 20 mins. Says he will need to ring me back to finalise the replacement card, this one can see my mobile number.
Here we are in the middle of Pisa really no idea where, no traffic going passed. We have a map and try to figure out where to catch a taxi, when a man comes along and I ask for help. He wants to help but his English not so good, fortunately a middle aged couple appear and hear our conversation and help by ringing the taxi company to send one to us. There a good people in this world.
Taxi to the station and organise a fast train back to Rome, leaving in 10 minutes, will take just over 3 hours. It’s 7pm.
The guy from MasterCard now decides to call and says he needs 30 minutes of my time to sort my new card. Put him off, I still have an AMEX and another bank credit card so there’s no rush. Tell him to call in 14 hours that’ll be 9 am tomorrow. Still haven’t heard from him.
Nice train ride down the west coast of Italy.
I would recommend going to Pisa first as there’s only the Tower and then Florence. Probably gives you more time in Florence.
Arrive in Rome at 10 pm on time.
Walk over to the taxi rank to get a taxi back to our hotel and a guy ask if we want a taxi, of course Dea asks how much. €25,00 only cost us 10 to get there. He’ll do it for 20.
Dea’s dubious and probably correct as it turns out to be a private driver in an iffy car. By now I’d had enough and just wanted to get back to the hotel so accept. He could be fined €6,000 for each customer, but he got us home quickly.
Went straight to bed.
Saturday I felt very flat and Dea needed to rest her back so we did nothing.
Sunday the Vatican.