10. BREAD: Coming from a country where they will put a basket of bread on your table to help pass time while your waiting for your food, is was weird seeing upwards of a 4 euro bread charge.
9. WATER: It seems a little Communistic to charge you for something that you can get for free at any fountain in the city.
8. MONTE CARLO CASINO: I know that the goal of a casino is to take you for all your worth. I guess I just didn't think that included paying 10 euro just to get on to the casino floor. We opted to gamble at our hotel casino, not as famous, but I won 70 euro playing black jack.
7. NUESCHWANSTEIN CASTLE: I knew that this castle inspired Cinderella's castle at Disneyworld, but I guess If I wanted to see an amusement park castle, I wouldn't have flown all the way to Germany.
6. POPE? POPE WHO?: We found out that the pope will go out to St. Peter's square every Wednesday morning and give a large blessing to that gathering of people, and anyone can attend. Well I guess he was just too tired from his Obama visit, because the one Wednesday we were there, he was on vacay and we didn't get to see him.
5. GLASS MUSEUM: On the island of Murano, in Venice, they have many different glass blowing factories. It's what they are famous for. I figured that a place called the Glass Museum might have a demonstration of the process. Boy was I wrong. All they had were a bunch of really old vases and bowls. I could have seen that same thing at a weekend garage sale. Joe disputes this item on the list however, because he was having some "pressing issues" and was happy to pay the 5.50 euro each to use the WC.
4. COKE-A-COLA: Let's just say we really had to break any coke addiction we had because we weren't about to pay 3-4 euro for the equivalent of half a can of coke.
3. EXCHANGE RATE: For our trip we were looking at about 1 euro = 1.42 dollars. So that meant 5 euro = 7.10. This was bad enough, but in Venice Joe decided to exchange some American cash we had at an exchange place. These places are as bad as the Check into Cash places here. They charge you 15% just to make the exchange. The best way to go was withdrawing money from the ATM.
2. SEA BASS DINNER: I mentioned this experience in a previous post, but it still has to be some of the worst money we spent. I think in the future I'll stick to pizza and pasta in Rome.
and the number one worst value for the money...
1. FIZZANTE WATER: Imagine the scenario...you've been walking for miles in Roman Ruins. 5 hours in the hot blazing sun. You want nothing more than a ice cold bottle of water. You decide to bite the bullet and pay 3 euro for a bottle of water from the corner store. You grab the bottle, happily fork over the money, step outside to take your first drink...and you get fizzy water. I don't know what the Europeans see in this water. I was never more disappointed than I was at that moment. From that point on, I always made sure my water had "no gas".
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