SKIP ROME! We read the warnings and prepared, but still were taken! We let our guard down when my husband failed to return his credit card to his security pouch. We were the victim of a pickpocketer on the subway,but that was only the beginning of our adventure in Rome.
We immediately went to a police officer who sent us to a
office (four officers seating/talking/smoking) in the Termini AND they sent us to ANOTHER OFFICE! We were told to wait with others to make a police report. Others were waiting, too! We waited and waited and WAITED, after one hour of being totally ignored we just gave up and left.
We chalked it up to us being careless,twice in one day cashiers attempted to short change us! Of course after you insist and are persistent they apologize. My son-in-law was given change in the form of coins from South Africa.
On the subject of change, they don't like to give it and are always asking if you have
correct change and then get irritated if you say no.
Beggers on the sidewalks and streets! Vendors with their wares blocking the walkways and streets everywhere! So many that at times we had to walk in the street to go around them. Selling fake purses, jewelry, watches, umbrellas, tripods...etc...
In Florence street vendors selling fake purses were arrested.
Subway ticket machines don't always work after taking your money or they issue tickets that won't work on the turnstills. We attempted to report to the man at the station that we didn't get our tickets, but he just told us we needed to buy more tickets. At one point when we purchased our 4 tickets at the same time, one ticket read 1 hour LATER than the other 3 tickets! Because of having difficulty with the machines we decided to purchase 24 hour tickets only to realize that the next day the tickets wouldn't work on the turnstills! CRAZY!
We saved our money to visit Italy and looked forward to visiting Rome, but I now tell everyone SKIP ROME! Dishonesty and rude people are everywhere! We loved Florence, Venice and Milan!
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on Mar 28, 2007
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