Mediterranean Cruise 2012

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Catania

Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian sea, between Messini and Syracruse and is the second largest city in Sicily. It has one of the oldest universities in Sicily which was opened in 1434!

We did a hop on hop off bus tour around the city then walked around the streets and came across a another protest, this time it was a group of people who apparently hadn't been paid for about 4 months so naturally were very angry about it. There were some older people in the protest march and we assume by the writing that they hadn't been paid their superannuation.... we think...

We discovered on this day that our NAB Travellers card had been emptied!

We would transfer funds across on an as needs basis onto the card and on checking that the funds had gone onto the card - it had all gone! We rang the international number for lost funds, cards etc and discovered that a merchant in South America, yes South America had paid the funds across in about 8 different transactions as purchases!

As you can imagine we were quite shocked about it and are now waiting to receive a Dispute form from the bank... however, we have waited for a few days now and it hasn't shown up yet so suspect that the bank don't have the correct email address or spelt it wrong.

All this paled into significance when friends came back to the ship on the same day and told us that they were robbed of a handbag which has credit cards, cash and passports plus camera. What happened was that they were in a taxi, caught in traffic, when a motorbike rider and passenger stopped next to them, opened the door and took the bag! They had been travelling for about 7 weeks and had all their photos from all over Europe in the camera - irreplacable.. how devastating would that be?!

We were having lunch in a little cafe when we found out our problem - most cafes have free wifi thank goodness - otherwise some of these blogs may never have been done! We loved the way the bottles of wine were separately set into the wall to keep them cool. Quite novel.

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