Bari
The day started on a cruise ship in Bari, on the east coast of Italy. It ended in an AirBnB apartment in the Eastern Docklands precinct of Amsterdam, on the north coast of The Netherlands.
We woke early, just before 7am, as the cruise line had advised us that it wanted us out of our cabin by 7.30am and off their damn ship by 7.45am. And so, naturally, at 8.15am we were sitting in the buffet having breakfast. As I’d realised at the Torre della Ziro, it’s culturally appropriate to ignore the rules of Italian bureaucrats. We reckoned that the worst they could do to us was throw us off their ship, which would have allowed us to skip yet another queue, so frankly we could see an upside to it.
From the ship, we walked up through Bari Old Town, a maze of pale stone buildings reminiscent of Split, and then into Bari New Town, where a dedicated pedestrian mall allows people like me to go all the way to the train station without encountering a car. Except for this one, which was okay by me.
From there, we took a local train to the Bari Airport, then got on a plane belonging to an airline I’d never even heard of to fly to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, a flight of about two and a half hours.
From Schipol Airport, we took the special airport train in to Amsterdam Centraal, then a local train out to Indische Buurt, then walked to our AirBnB and collapsed in a heap.
I rallied long enough to walk to the local supermarket, which after the charmingly haphazard supermarkets of Italy seemed like a bright modern space filled with good food and drink. I bought French wine, pastries, berries, salad and crusty bread, then took it all up to the cashier and whipped out my credit card.
Which was declined.
Not because there was anything wrong with my credit card – it’s still working fine. But apparently Dutch supermarkets don’t take credit cards. It seems that the Dutch regard buying something as basic as food on credit as morally reprehensible, and they won’t be a party to that.
Never mind that I use my credit card as a debit card and haven’t paid a cent of interest in years. Never mind that the rest of the civilised world has accepted credit cards in supermarkets for decades. Never mind that the Dutch supermarkets even have the machines set up at the checkouts, but only for proper Dutch debit cards.
So I had to use about half of my rapidly dwindling reserves of cash to pay for my groceries. Which left a rather sour taste in my mouth, alleviated only by the aforementioned French wine and pastries.
We woke early, just before 7am, as the cruise line had advised us that it wanted us out of our cabin by 7.30am and off their damn ship by 7.45am. And so, naturally, at 8.15am we were sitting in the buffet having breakfast. As I’d realised at the Torre della Ziro, it’s culturally appropriate to ignore the rules of Italian bureaucrats. We reckoned that the worst they could do to us was throw us off their ship, which would have allowed us to skip yet another queue, so frankly we could see an upside to it.
From the ship, we walked up through Bari Old Town, a maze of pale stone buildings reminiscent of Split, and then into Bari New Town, where a dedicated pedestrian mall allows people like me to go all the way to the train station without encountering a car. Except for this one, which was okay by me.
From there, we took a local train to the Bari Airport, then got on a plane belonging to an airline I’d never even heard of to fly to Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, a flight of about two and a half hours.
From Schipol Airport, we took the special airport train in to Amsterdam Centraal, then a local train out to Indische Buurt, then walked to our AirBnB and collapsed in a heap.
I rallied long enough to walk to the local supermarket, which after the charmingly haphazard supermarkets of Italy seemed like a bright modern space filled with good food and drink. I bought French wine, pastries, berries, salad and crusty bread, then took it all up to the cashier and whipped out my credit card.
Which was declined.
Not because there was anything wrong with my credit card – it’s still working fine. But apparently Dutch supermarkets don’t take credit cards. It seems that the Dutch regard buying something as basic as food on credit as morally reprehensible, and they won’t be a party to that.
Never mind that I use my credit card as a debit card and haven’t paid a cent of interest in years. Never mind that the rest of the civilised world has accepted credit cards in supermarkets for decades. Never mind that the Dutch supermarkets even have the machines set up at the checkouts, but only for proper Dutch debit cards.
So I had to use about half of my rapidly dwindling reserves of cash to pay for my groceries. Which left a rather sour taste in my mouth, alleviated only by the aforementioned French wine and pastries.
posted by Blandwagon at 11:50 PM
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