When in Rome {I mean, Florence}...

This morning as I was being publically berated for not having my Trax pass, I was reminded of a funny story.

When Matt and I were traveling around Italy we stopped in Florence for a few days.  We quickly observed that nobody seemed to be monitoring ticket purchases for the city bus.  So we decided to cut costs (let’s be honest, we probably bought gelato with the “saved money”) and rode the bus for free.

One afternoon as we were riding,  4 non-uniformed people got on the bus at different door openings.  As soon as the bus started driving they pulled out their badges and started checking tickets.  Of course we were quickly discovered for our dishonesty and as we tried to question the attendant I caught a guy we had met the night before trying to get our attention.  He was telling us to run since the attendant had gone back to another attendant to clarify the plethora of questions we were asking.  To avoid further trouble, we decided not to. 

Later as we were laughing about the whole incident, Matt told me the reason we couldn’t run was because he was certain he would be able to outrun them, but I’d get caught and then he’d have to come back to the police station to pick me up.

Things to note: Although I don’t claim to be fast, I run all the time, and the man I was supposed to outrun was exceptionally big and according to my judgmental eyes, probably not very fast.

We managed to smile, but I think we were still pretty distraught about the ticket.

What ticket?  Gelato solves everything. 

 This is an especially attractive photo of Matt.