We’ve covered a lot of ground in a very short period of time as we pointed our bow in the direction of southern Spain. It’s been two weeks since we left Rome but it feels more like a few action packed days. After a nice visit to Siena we wound our way through the beautiful Tuscany countryside and found our well hidden campsite in Florence. Excited about checking out this epicentre of the renaissance, we headed out early the next morning with Michelangelo’s famous statue of David squarely in our sights as our first cultural contact. You know, it’s amazing how quickly ones attitude and opinion of a place can change with just one negative experience, like a transit “rip-off” first thing in the day, yes… Another! “Bogus Ticket” (Check-out the “Road Ramble” to fully appreciate our still boiling blood). Trying hard to overcome our anger about such an unjust experience we did manage to have a decent day exploring much of this fantastic old city and after waiting in line for two hours to see David, for one brief moment, we were so overwhelmed that we completely forgot about our most recent Italian ill-treatment.
We drove from Florence to Pisa where we made a quick guest appearance with the tower, such a remarkable site to see from close-up. The Italian Rivera is truly “eye candy” all the way to Monte-Carlo where Monaco itself then becomes the crowning jewel. Lucky for our bank account, we just missed the mega Monaco Yacht Show just below the Casino. But Jim, we did find a nice new blue and white boat for you, it’s the one in the harbour photo attached. Along the way to Monaco we got a glimpse of the salvaged ill-fated Costa Concordia at dock, such a sad sight and story. From Monaco we zipped along the interesting beachfront of Cannes looking for movie stars but only found miles of empty wet sand… they must have all been in Venice for George Clooney’s wedding.
We drove inland along Napoleon’s trail through Grasse (Famous for the development of French perfume) to impressive Avignon with its famous bridge and song “Pont du-Avignon”. A quick and interesting drive along the French southern coast finds us now at the doorstep to Spain with Barcelona just next door and Madrid not far away. The weather is chilling, the Fall colours are beautiful and the warmth of southern Spain is now calling our name.

Road Ramble: And yet another Bogus ticket.

When traveling in Italy forget about the Mafia or petty crime on the streets of Rome; instead, watch out for the sneakier and even “legal” local municipal scams. Yes, we did get a second bogus $80 ticket and this time it was for improperly stamping a bus ticket.
We were very excited to arrive in Florence and experience all the culture and beauty. When checking into our campground the lady said we could purchase our bus tickets from her so I asked for 4 (2 to travel into the city centre, and 2 for the return trip). To our surprise, she said there was a single ticket that could be used for two people but it needed to be stamped on the bus in both directions. We thought to ourselves what a great idea having two kinds of tickets therefore saving paper and reducing garbage. So we headed for the bus with ticket in hand. When we looked at the ticket it said “Validate on boarding the first vehicle” which we thought we did when “punching it” as we entered the bus (It did not say to validate for each rider using this ticket and therefore punch the ticket twice). So, when the “transit agent ticket lady” asked to see our ticket we had no concerns whatsoever. When she told us that we were in violation we were shocked, we tried to explain to her what had happened and that we misunderstood the two punch process but we had purchased our tickets at full price and she could phone the campground to check our story. She became loud and aggressive and would not even consider the awkward and difficult situation we found ourselves in. She told us we were in Italy and therefore we should speak and read Italian, then we wouldn’t have this problem. Obviously she was not a leading ambassador of tourism. We could tell that other people on the bus were concerned about her lack of reason, understanding and judgement and also the way she was treating a pair of confused city guests about to spend money in their city. One nice local lady even tried to reason with the agent on our behalf but got the same rude treatment that we did.
We did become upset about the complete unfairness of this situation and wanted to talk to a transit company superior or supervisor to explain our situation but she said she was going to call the police if we didn’t pay now. We said fine because we had not broken any laws by intent and possibly the police could help us reason with this lady. When we explained our story to the police officer we could tell he felt the whole situation was unnecessary and should never have happened, but he had no choice but to support the transit agent. We produced our identification, and she wrote-up a violation for $55 Euros ($80). We had understood that we would now walk into the main terminal with the ticket agent and speak to a supervisor to explain, with her present, but as we went further inside the terminal she pointed at a ticket office line-up and walked away shouting something to us in Italian. After waiting in line for some time we explained what had happened to two different desk agents and were told that the issuing agent had used very poor judgement in issuing this fine and implied that she should have shown some discretion considering the unusual circumstances involved, but they could not help fix this for us. Needless to say, we were a bit upset for the rest of the entire day. Upset about the added expenditure, upset about the embarrassing confrontation, upset because of how unjust, uncompromising, unfriendly and unfair this experience was for two confused travellers. We paid the fine to the agent at the counter and she felt so bad that she suggested we write the transit authority… good luck! When we explained what had happened to the campground lady, she was furious as this has happened before and seemed to be a regular scam. She had already written the transit company a number of times and the local newspaper about this apparent abuse of ignorant tourists and was told the practice would end… good luck! After two bogus municipal fines in Italy, we leave feeling a bit disappointed about the local authorities but we’re now looking forward to a more friendly experience in Spain.