When I had planned my holiday to Italy some of my friends had warned me to be careful with my bag on the streets as there are many cases of robberies. The Italian mafias are also famous, so, during our trip I was all the time careful with my handbag and never did face any such issue, and I felt that people unnecessary create panic with these kinds of statements. There was nothing really to worry about with the handbag while walking on the streets. It was all safe. Even when I visited crowded places like the Duomo and Vatican city, it was all ok. But then somewhere I had to get the flavor of the place.
From our cruise we had a day in Florence, we got down at the port and from there took a bus to the main Florence city. From there I wanted to visit Pisa so we were looking out for a cab that would do a round trip for us to Pisa. There were quite a few shops there who were also in to care rentals. Pisa is a famous place and most of the people who come to Florence, take a day trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower of Pisa.
We managed to find one guy of Asian origin, who agreed to do the trip for us for 400$. We had one more family with us of 3, so total 6 of us travelled together and per family our cost was coming to 200$ which was a fair deal. Our trip went well, we finished the Pisa sight-seeing and by the time we reached Florence we were almost on time to get back to the cruise. We did not have much of time, so we were in a hurry. So while getting down, hubby told me he had 100$ and he asked me to give the balance. I told him to keep the 100 and I would pay the full amount to the driver. Hubby missed hearing it and he gave 100$ to the driver and then I too gave 200$ to him and the guy took it without mentioning to me that he already got 100$ from my hubby. Now the whole thing here was that as I mentioned he was an Asian guy and he understood my language. All the way while we were communicating he was reciprocating, so even the money conversation he had heard.
He saw that we were all in a hurry, so he conveniently took the money and did not mention anything about the extra payment he received. When we left his cab and got back into the bus to get back to the port, me and hubby had conversation and we realized that we made a mistake. Hubby called him up and told him that he should come to the port and give us the money, he listened to us and disconnected the call and after that switched off his phone. We tried calling him again and his phone was switched off. This made very clear that he had no intention of returning the money.
He was well aware that we had to get on the cruise and there was no way we were returning back to the market to take the money from him, and there was absolutely nothing that we could do. I felt very stupid about the whole incident and was also annoyed with myself. 100$ is not a small amount and it kept playing on my mind for a couple of days but then there was nothing that I could do so I had to just let it go.
Travelling brings across so many different types of experiences with people and places. Some are pleasant and some are unpleasant and at the end of the day they all become memory.
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