Heading west

So this my first blog in a few days, covering Rome, Pisa and Nice.

Anyway, so we ended up on a train that got to Rome at 11pm, with the intention of getting straight on an urban train to the campsite we are staying at. We were thrilled, however, when we arrived in Rome and found out the urban trains had shut down for the night, so we hung out under a doorway in the center of Rome, in one of the biggest thunderstorms I’ve seen, until about 2am when we had to suck it up and fork out 40 euros for a cab. Seeing as we’d slept on the roof of a ferry the night before, it was fair to say that we were pretty wrecked, and treated outselves to a small sleep in the next day.

Come early afternoon, Soph and I ventured into the city of Rome, to get our tourist on. We saw the must-sees like the Colloseum and the Vatican (which was a lot more impressive than I though it would be) – but apparently isn’t very beater friendly so we had to buy cringeworthy tourist shirts to cover ourselves with. Anyway, we got on a trian back to the campsite, and as I was just outside the station someone pointed out that my bag was undone. A quick check revealed that I’d been robbed; they’d opened my bag while it was on my back and taken my camera and ipod. While both were covered with travel insurance, I was pretty annoyed; I’d lost a day worth of photos. As it turns out, it ended up being extremely lucky, but more on that later.

So I hit up the police station the next morning before we left Rome, played shirades with the policeman for half an hour (he didn’t speak a word of english) and did whatever I needed to do to get my police report, then we got on a train to Pisa. First thought was ‘christ, it REALLY does lean’. No joke, someone screwed up pretty bad, that’s one crooked tower. Looks nice as well, Pisa is a pretty asthetic city, we went out for dinner and an evening walk around, loads of tourists. Bloody tourists. We had planned to visit La Spezia the following day, but we decided to chill out a bit in Pisa, fill out my insurance claim, and then find a place to buy a new camrea. What we ended up finding was the best/worst check out chick. Ever. I decided to lash out on a $350 camera that looked the bees’ knees, and found a case and memory card. Was all good, bought them at the checkout, went back to our room and got the receipt to put in my ‘safe’ folder, and.. The receipt said 22 euros. 1 camera bag, 1 memory card. Not a word about the camera. No joke, the lady at the checkout took the security tag off the camera, but must have forgotten to swipe it. I just scored $350 worth of camera for absolutely free. This has put me in a good mood ever since, I still can’t really believe it happened.

Soph and I awoke the next morning feeling remarkably average. There was a fair bit of whinging untill we realised it may well be due to the fact that we have not eaten anything other than Margharita pizza for the last 4 days; we hadn’t so much as looked at a piece of fruit or a vegedable. So we desperately hit up a supermarket, and feasted on watermelon, grapes, bananas and fruit juice. Worked like a charm - lesson learnt.

We left Pisa, said goodbye to Italy, and made our way up to Nice in the south of France for a night. Very pretty town, very touristy and pretty expensive, we met up with Hugh once again there, and went for a wander. We reall immersed ourselves in french culture as we ordered KFC for diner without a word of french being said, and went for an evening ‘wasp’ around the city, watching a pretty entertaining breakdancing show amoungst other street performances. We’re hoping to see somebody famous, but no luck so far. Now we’re on a train to Marseille for a night, before making our way to Spain, and from there Morocco. Europe is nearly over...