I can't say my trip to Paris went perfectly. It actually had a very low point after the New Year's celebration I joined on the Champs Elysees. I made my way back to my hotel that night in a rather round-a-bout way. It was probably only a 15 minute walk to my hotel from where I was (I had made my way over there via the Metro), but the route back was blocked by an incredible amount of security around the Arc de Triomphe. My plan was to travel back by the Metro as well, but it was so crowded, the gendarme (police) would not let anyone in after 12:30 AM. I was forced to walk. I can't say the road I took back was empty, but it wasn't full of people either. I was 2 blocks from my hotel and the iPhone I had owned for 1 1/2 weeks was literally grabbed right out of my hand. For the first time in my life, I had been robbed!
It was devastating. Ask my parents, they were the ones who received my hysterical phone call once I made it back to my hotel. As far as I was concerned, my trip was ruined! I had stupidly kept my phone in plain sight and had been followed by some young punks who probably did this for a living. It was terrifying and humiliating at the same time. : ( The part that upset me the most wasn't the possibility that the criminals would run up my phone bill (I called AT&T before the call to my parents and had my phone service stopped right away), but all of the photos and videos I had taken the last 5 days I had been in Paris had just been lost! Yes, I had taken photos on my Nikon digital camera, but I had shot so many more on my iPhone. Those photos were the fun, cute shots you take quickly and discreetly, you know? When I was on the stairs from the 2nd to 1st level of the Eiffel Tower, I had taken a great video of the lights twinkling all around me. It was just magical. There were photos from Marie Antoinette's hamlet in Versailles, the food and goodies we ate on the culinary tour, etc... gone, they were all gone. I'm sure those bad guys enjoyed looking through the images of my trip before they swiped the phone clean and sold it on eBay.
The next morning, January 1st, most shops and museums were closed in Paris so I knew it would be a quiet day anyway. Part of me wanted to re-schedule my flight and go home that day! This was where the hotel computers came in handy though. I started sending emails to my family, telling them I was OK. They were really worried about me, of course. Even though I had a less-than-supportive conversation with the hotel concierge (he had no sympathy for my plight and was surly while I asked for advice about my stolen phone), over the course of the day, my mood lifted a bit. My sister Meg told me to give it some time. She reassured me that the trauma I was feeling, in time would turn into, "Can you believe what happened to me?" In hindsight I would tell the story in a much lighter note.
Luckily, I had sent a few of my iPhone photos to friends and family during the trip, as well as, posting some to Facebook. I was able to retrieve a few of them, even the Versailles Hall of Mirrors video. It seemed to lose it's quality being sent back and forth, but that didn't bother me much, at least I have it. On an interesting note, I had been keeping track of what I had done so far in Paris on the Notes app on my phone. Sometime earlier in the day of the 31st, it occurred to me that I should forward what I had written so far to my email address. Just in case. Thank goodness I did! I would have never remembered all of the detail I had written down if I had not sent it to myself. Later in the day on the 1st, I decided I would stick it out and enjoy my last day in the City of Light.
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