When we go on holiday, we expect to pay a bit more for our meals. We budget for it. In fact, we may even choose to splash out a couple of times. But what we don't expect is to pay through the nose for a spot of lunch.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to a group of tourists in Rome who were charged £70 for two burgers and three coffees.
Visiting the Caffe Vaticano restaurant, the tourists were less than happy with the price and shared their receipt on review website TripAdvisor. A picture shared online by Emma Cheppy shows how the bill shows the meal for two came to €81.40 (£70.62).
Emma, an American holiday-goer, shared the image of Facebook, warning other tourists off the over-priced food outlet, saying Caffe Vaticano "has been ripping off tourists for ages".
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She went on: "No clue how they're still getting away with their pricing" before advising others to "skip it and find another place to eat near the Vatican".
The receipt showed the restaurant had charged the table of two €25 (£21.90) per hamburger and €8 (£7) per cappuccino, of which they had one each, €8 (£7) for one Americano, and a 10 per cent service charge fee of €7.40 (£6.48).
And if you're wondering why people aren't simply checking the menu before they sit down, it's because there are no prices on the menu to start with.
Outrageous, we think you'll agree...
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The eatery, situated opposite the Vatican, has over 1800 reviews on TripAdvisor with a rating of just 1.5 stars out of five.
And it seems to be quite a theme for the restaurant on the review site, with hundreds of customers also sharing photos of their scary-looking receipts.
One angry customer explained that he was charged €112 for two hotdogs, three Coca Colas and some bruschetta, saying he was "shocked by the rip-off prices they presented".
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Another reviewer warned: "Don't sit down in this cafe unless money grows on trees in your backyard."
Saying he wishes he could score the restaurant just half a star, he called the price of a large cappuccino "five times the cost of one in Sydney [...] or three times the price of one in London," and a scoop of ice cream "four times the cost of anywhere else in Rome".
Another tourist said Caffe Vaticano was "[The] only place on our trip that I have experienced being ripped off," adding, "They fleece tourists waiting to go into Vatican".
Since, TripAdvisor have put a block on reviews of the restaurant due to an "influx of review submissions that do not describe a first-hand experience."
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Seems like they would have been better off ordering a Dominos.
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