Pisa, Italy

Little town known as Pisa was an interesting experience. It was such a small town–literally, the only thing to see here is the leaning tower and yes, it is really leaning. Nope, it’s not an illusion. Makes you wonder, how could you build something like that? If you read the history about the leaning tower, it wasn’t intentional. It was actually a mistake. Well guess what, not all mistakes are bad. Some are actually worth it. …well in this case. It turns out that now, Pisa is a tourist attraction!

Exploring Pisa was part of a two-day plan to also explore Florence, Italy. Getting to the leaning tower requires that you take a bus. I always hated taking buses in Europe because there are always pick pocketers that you have to watch out for and they are so cleaver that sometimes no matter what you do, you still end up pick pocketed! Shame! Well, today, I wasn’t the lucky person to be pick pocketed. My collegue Tiana was the lucky one! This is how it all went down…

Myself and a bunch of other girls–14 of us exactly, boarded the bus that would take us to the tower. Once we all got on, the bus for some odd reason didn’t depart right away. It just waited…and waited..and waited. More and more people kept getting onto the bus and before you know it we were all packed onto it like sardines. I was looking around and I noticed a pregnant lady and her two children were in between some of us. The little girl was talking to some of us on the bus –which later I realized she was distracting us. All of sudden I heard all of this commotion. Tiana noticed that her wallet was gone. I saw a lady pointing to the little boy who fled off the bus along with his pregnant mother and the little girl. Tiana went sprinting off of the bus right after them. She came back within minutes WITH her wallet. I stood there still on the bus holding the rails, in complete shock. I just could not believe what I had saw. In my mind I kept asking myself, did that just really happen? Y’all come on…did some lady just have the nerve to use her children to pickpocket one of us? Still, I couldn’t believe it. From that day on, I was the most paranoid black person in all of Europe. The next day, I bought a new purse that had zippers and buttons everywhere. Nope–I was not about to be next on the list. Absolutely not. I honestly will never forget this day. That’s Pisa for you…Watch out!