I was going to try to get to the quilt shop in Paris on Friday since I was there for a business trip, but life got in the way.
Imagine if you will, you are 73 years old and this is your first trip back to Paris since you left when you were 18. You had flown in from the west coast of the United states the day before, your are staying in Paris for a week with your daughter and grand daughter, and on your first day, you lose your purse somewhere near the Eiffel tower.
Now cut to two intrepid travelers who no longer hang out at the sights of Paris, they have been to Paris so many times before that now they trek deep off the beaten path, but due to the need of a picture of the Eiffel tower, on that day they find themselves in the area trying to get that perfect picture. It is a beautiful day, blue sky with puffy white clouds and a mild temperature somewhere in the mid 60s. As he is taking the picture, she is looking around thinking about how good a glass of wine would be at a nearby caf=E9... and it is then that she spots the purse, the leather color the same as the ground it was lying on.
What do you do? It goes without saying that you try to find the rightful owner, but how? Do you turn it in to the police? Do you try to track the rightful owner down yourself? Would the US embassy be of any help? After waiting for about 5 minutes with the purse, she decides to go through the purse and see if there was any information inside that would help identify the owner. The plane ticket receipt from the Air France flight identified the date of arrival into France, there were the 2 credit cards, a drivers license, insurance cards, cash (a sickening $500 equivalent). No passport, thank goodness. He takes the drivers license and begins to look near the Eiffel tower for someone who remotely looks like the picture on the license. He has no luck. When he returns, she calls a friend in the states to see if he could look her up since we had a name and address. A message is left on her answering machine in California. She searches the purse again and this time finds a hotel key. So after searching for the number, she calls the hotel (a very expensive and exclusive hotel located near the opera House) No one by that name is registered at the hotel, and somehow in the conversation you get cut off. So they decide to go to the hotel. The key is encrypted for the room and they should be able to read the room from the key and verify if she is still at the hotel.
So off they go to the hotel. On the way they pass by Cartier and other high end shops. She says "want to go buy me something there?" He thinks for a minute and says "sure we have 2 extra credit cards..." Nice joke, she smiles....On arrival to the hotel, the hotel staff is amazed that someone was actually trying to return a purse to someone they do not know. The head of security is called and so is the head of customer relations. Someone gives them a voucher for free drinks at the bar. The contents of the purse are counted and the room is verified to belong to the daughter of the woman whose purse was lost. Information on hotel and phone number for the intrepid travelers is taken. They promise someone will call them. After a wonderful glass of wine at the bar, the two intrepid travelers are off back to their own hotel to get ready for a work function they had that evening.
The next day the cell phone rings. "Do you speak English?" asks the caller. It is the daughter of the woman who had lost her purse. She is grateful and extremely happy that the purse was found and returned. They had spent part of the day searching for the purse to no avail. Mom is in a wheel chair and the three of them, mom, daughter and granddaughter had not noticed when the purse slipped out of the chair and was lost. The hotel had blocked their room so when they had returned, they could not get in their room and were forced to go down to the front desk. I would imagine having a day like that and then thinking as I could not get in the room, "Great, now what?" 'Now what?' was that hotel security had mom's purse.
They have 5 more days in Paris. I dare say they will be much more careful about their belongings. I hope their visit is full of fun and that the trip is everything they hoped it would be. I can get to the quilt shop on the next trip!