Day 9 - "I didn't pay to get arrested!", Jacob

Our day started off just like the rest. We got up at around 7:30 and had breakfast at the hotel. Our plan for the day was to go to the train station and ride to Pisa to see the leaning bell tower.

The walk to the train station was not as bad as I thought it would be. It was much closer to our hotel than our original taxi ride had me believe. Our confidence in using the self service ticketing machines was still not high so we got in the ticket line like most of the other tourists did. Amy bought round trip tickets for herself and I. Ed bought the tickets for himself, Jacob and Anne.

The train ride was pretty uneventful. Just a couple of stops and we were there in about 1.5 hours. Because the bell tower is all the way across the city, we had to take a bus (about a 20 minute ride) to the Duomo, the Baptistry, and what Pisa is famous for, the leaning tower of Pisa.

It was probably the neatest thing i've seen so far. David was unbelievable, St, Peters and the view from its top was breathtaking, but the leaning tower was just plain cool. After wandering around the grounds for a bit and taking silly pictures just like everyone else (you know, acting like your holding up the tower), we found ourselves wanting lunch. It was pizza again for everyone.

After lunch, we decided to head back to Florence. We were still not sure if we were going to climb to the top of the Dome. We got to the train station just in time. A train for Florence was going to be there in 15 minutes. By luck, we got on a car with no one on it. We opened all of the windows and started our joy ride back to home base. The trouble didn't start until we almost arrived in Florence....

As usual, a person was coming around checking tickets. We took ours out just like our ride there. Expecting the ticket attendant to hole punch it as before, we were surprised when he said that they were not stamped and we had to pay 5 euro for each ticket. Huh? We tried to explain that we didn't get them stamped because we didn't see any signs and no one told us that we had to. That didn't fly with the ticket attendant. We told him that we were not going to pay. He took our tickets and said that we can talk to the polizia at the train station.

That is when Jacob said (from the mouths of children) "We didn't pay to get arrested!" At least that lightened the moment. When we got off the train, there was about 10 seconds when we thought we were home-free. The polizia passed us by - so we kept on walking. Then the attendant pointed to us. Sigh.....
Well to make a long story short, the police didn't even talk to us - they were just there to intimidate us as the attendant once again demanded the money. We tried to appeal logically (the tickets were purchased today - used today - we hadn't been trying to steal a free ride - we're not from here - we can't speak Italian.....). It was frustrating. We ended up just paying the penalty so that we wouldn't end up in jail or wasting any more time. Amy did file a complaint which was probably tossed the moment she walked away. Ed says that he is going to write the Italian embassy when we get home.

After our near run-in with the law, we decided to go shopping some more (made us all feel better). We ended the day back at Trattoria Nevella (our first favorite restaurant that I missed because I was sick). They were right - it was REALLY bad (yes, I am being sarcastic). Tomorrow is our train ride to Venezia. Hopefully we won't get arrested!!