Today we said goodbye to Greece and Turkey and made our way to Italy. First, an early morning taxi ride from the Samos Port across the Island to the very small airport side- this is where Pythagoras lived. Then a flight back to Athens, a three hour layover with all of our stuff in a pile by some chairs, and finally a three hour flight to Rome.
Like Athens (and I think by design), the airport is far from the City centre, so of course there is no inexpensive way to get to our budget Band B that we found. The Band B proprietor gave us directions on how to use the metro and train, but those were misplaced in the morning rush and we were left to the whims of the Roman gods. For us, the Italian directions for airport egress might as well have been in Greek, and we stood in the airport exit with our cart of luggage for quite some time pondering what to do. The taxi had a flat rate fee to anywhere in the old city (we found this in Athens as well). The metro and train appeared to have several tricky transfers, and by the time we purchased tickets for all three it was more expensive than a cab.
So back to the taxi stand. Upon exiting the airport two smartly dressed young Italian men came up and informed us that if we used the taxi there would be a “surcharge tax” per kilogram for each piece of luggage in the taxi, and we should use their special shuttle across the street instead. Incredulous, and getting angry by this time, we asked the taxi control and they said this was a sham. So there it was! Not even out of the airport and our first Roma experience with hustlers.
After giving the scheisters an appropriate glare, we schlepped our bags to the cab and experienced a long, traffic jammed ride to our Band B. A five minute walk later we were sitting across from the Colosseum having spaghetti dinner. Not a bad end to a very long day of travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment