The crime and fall in the Roman Empire

Here I am on our transatlantic cruise from Miami, Florida, to Venice, Italy. I received a lovely gift from our wait-staff on Valentine's Day...a dessert I didn't need.

Sunset behind the Carnival Destiny, now being refitted to emerge as the Carnival Sunshine.

Florence, Italy. I found a lovely little restaurant for lunch nearby.

The cathedral and its famous tower in Pisa.
My husband climbed it. I didn't.

Trevi Fountain, "somewhere in the heart of Rome"!

The weather may have been grey, but I felt sunny just being in Venice.

Waiting for Dick to register at our hotel in Milan.

Too many beautiful views from which to choose in Cinque Terre, Italy.

The same can be said for the Amalfi Coast. There was beauty everywhere we looked. Here my intrepid photographer prepares for one of the thousands of photos he took in Italy.

We tried to pack light, but it was a month-long holiday, so we still had a lot of luggage to carry around Italy, getting on and off trains, and sometimes to and from hotels. However, we came home with less because the big suitcase on the right was stolen from the train in Naples.
Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies

Yes, it's true. We wuz robbed.

On the last of several trains by which we travelled in Italy, we lost some luggage. Dick had to make a report to the carabinieri in Rome. They gave him a form to fill out, shrugged, and said, "Oh, Napoli. Si, Napoli." That was pretty much what the hotel staff said to us when we finally arrived there. "Oh, yes, Naples. You have to be very careful there."

It seems Naples is not the place in which to leave any of your luggage unguarded while you put other pieces into the overhead bins.

Unfortunately, for me at least, I had absentmindedly tossed my wallet into the large suitcase when sleepy the night before. It had just been in my way on the beside table, and I didn't mean to leave it in the suitcase. However, in the morning, I forgot all about it.

I had only taken one credit card with me, and when I phoned to cancel it, I discovered someone had tried to use it while we were flying home, but failed because they didn't, of course, have the PIN number. Whew, thank goodness for chip cards and PIN numbers.

However, the wallet also contained photocopies of my birth certificate and our marriage certificate (because we have different surnames, I thought it would be good to have my husband's name on me if I'm ever hit by a bus).

Now I'm frantic about identity theft. I've been hearing about it for years, but the details didn't sink in. Can these items be used for someone to pretend to be me? If they have my mother's maiden name, can they take out other credit cards in my name? Our address is on the tags on all our luggage, in case an airline loses it, and I am always wary of purse-snatching, but theft of a large suitcase containing our end-of-vacation laundry, hadn't occurred to us.

So, I'm not washing clothes today, but I am definitely fretting.

*

So, there you have the crime, but what of the fall mentioned in my heading?

Oh, that was me, too. If I don't watch my feet while I'm walking, I trip over things.

I came off an elevator and was talking to Dick as he opened our hotel door about 10 feet away from me, which meant I was looking at him and not at my feet. The doorway from the elevator lobby to the hall had a two- or three-inch lip, and I knew about it, but didn't see it because I was looking at my husband instead of watching where I was going.

Splat!

Down I went, and I didn't go quietly. Dick says I screamed, but I know I didn't. I did make a whole lot of loud squeaky noises, however, because I came down on my right knee, the one with an old, old scar that still hurts when hit, as many scars do.

"Ow!" I said, and, "ooh, ooh, ooh" several times, perhaps more than several.

It took one husband, two chambermaids, and a chair to get me up, and once I got onto my bed I had no intention of going anywhere very fast.

So I missed a second day in Rome. We had checked out the sights (wow, the sights!) from the hop-on hop-off bus, visited the Trevi Fountain, and had lunch in a non-touristy restaurant nearby, but left the more intense sightseeing until later. Dick had to go by himself, of course, while I lay down until I felt well enough to get up and eat the chips and cookies from the mini-bar. By evening, I was functioning again, and able to limp out for a delicious dinner.

More photos will, I'm sure, be coming up. So far, I only have the ones taken with my little camera.

Posted for

Our World Tuesday

Also posted to

Open Link Monday at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads