Confessions of a Post-luggage-loss Shopaholic

Today’s post comes to us from Karin Gusta.  We were chatting the other day about a flight that she had taken to Paris and I just had to have her share it with everyone.  I love hearing about a bad situation turning out to be a great one! Knock on wood, I haven’t had any luggage lost during our travels, but I am sure that the inevitable will happen one day, and hopefully we have as pleasant of an experience as Karin and Gillian had.

Confessions of a Post-luggage-loss Shopaholic

Sometimes, the best part of travel is getting your luggage lost.

Wait, wait! Hear me out. I’m serious. Here’s the story.

A couple years ago I flew from Toronto to France via London. I was traveling with my friend Gillian. We went in September and planned on spending time in Paris, Marseille and then Poland. We were prepared for an assortment of weather possibilities.

We arrived in London, as did our luggage. It had managed to make the treacherous trek across the Atlantic unscathed. Crossing the English Channel however, proved to be too much of an undertaking. We flew with Air France. This, as you will see, turned out to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

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Somewhere between London and Paris, our 2 backpacks decided to vacation without us.
And this is where our tale begins.

During our initial communications with the airline, we were told they were on the hunt for our wayward luggage. More importantly, I was also told that we should purchase anything we needed in the mean time.

“What do you mean by ‘anything we need’?” I said, feeling like we were being set up.
The gentleman on the other end of the phone proceeded to tell us, that we should buy absolutely everything we required for our trip and that we would be reimbursed.

“This being our first trip to France, we had heard tales of Parisians being rude and unhelpful. Entirely not true!”

Being a financial prude and not wanting to spend money that wasn’t available, I asked for a concrete figure. A spending limit. I was never given one. The closest restrictive guideline I got was “Be sensible with your shopping. Don’t buy a 200 Euro t-shirt.”

Fair enough, I thought, and after some reluctance, I allowed this Air France carte blanche to whisk me away on my shopping adventure.

Oh what a terrible hardship had befallen us! Shopping in Paris.

I bought dresses, shoes, jeans, bikinis, sweaters. The list of necessities goes on and on ?

Not all of it was glamorous. There were cotton swabs and socks and moisturizer, but I have to say, even the purchase of fairly non-frivolous undies had an air of decadence to it when done in French.

And, one of the best parts of all this, was the people we encountered during our wardrobe-replenishment mission. This being our first trip to France, we had heard tales of Parisians being rude and unhelpful. Entirely not true!

Our French being quite limited, we found everyone did their best to help us, with the use of what they called their “little bit” of English. On a side note, apparently the French have a grave misunderstanding of what “a little bit” means. These people were damn near fluent!

There was also the added amusement of seeing the horror on the faces of these lovely French people, when they learned that is was their national airline that was responsible for our misfortune. It felt like they were compelled to personally right this wrong.

I did not abuse my shopping powers. I was sensible with most of my purchases, but not being familiar with this new retail adventureland that was Paris, I did end up with some purchases that would normally not fit my budget back home.

I have to admit, I still fought the inner beast of doubt on occasion. Could this really be true? Air France will pay for all this?

I drowned my doubts in the purchase of a lovely fall coat.

We also continued in our attempts to make contact with our elusive luggage, but alas, it was not to be found while we were in Europe.

I had accepted the loss of some of my favourite clothes and embraced my new chic, French wardrobe.

But the travel spirits, in their infinite wisdom and wonderfully scheming ways, not only supplied us with this unique shopping opportunity, but also saw it fit to return our belongings to us unharmed. In the end Air France delivered our recovered luggage directly to our homes in Toronto, around the same time we got back.

And so, you wonder, did we actually get reimbursed for our purchases?

Yes we did. Promptly. To the penny. No questions asked.

I heart Air France.

So what is the moral of this story?
Travel with a good airline, pack your “I can’t live without this stuff” in you carry-on, and keep your fingers crossed, that you too can acquire a whole new wardrobe courtesy of your friendly skies.

Karin Gusta currently lives in Toronto, but has lived in Poland, Iraq and Kuwait. Her love for travel displayed itself at a young age. Now she frequently combines it with her other passion – rock climbing. And shopping She funds her passions by working as a Graphic Designer.

You can follow her group on facebook at Pomegranate Graphic Design Services

For your Graphic Design needs and services visit her website at Pomegranate Designs