At first I wanted to write a detailed story of our Tour de France 2013 starting from Day 1. If you have been following my facebook, you would have noticed a series of unfortunate events happened in the last 48 hours which deserves to be recorded first. Here we go...
On day 8 of our tour, P and I packed our luggages in early morning and checked out the hotel as usual, headed to the TGV station and took the train to our next destination. Avignon was our final stop before going back to Paris in the evening on the same day. We planned to store our luggages at the train station and spend a couple of hours visiting the historic monuments on foot. As soon as we arrived at Avignon train station, we faced our first problem: our luggage could not be stored. We knocked on the doors at the hotels nearby and were rejected without an explanation. Even the staffs at the tourist information centre failed to provide an explanation. What could we do?
We went into a pharmacy store, like shoppers drug mart in Canada or Watsons in Hong Kong, and were looking at some local skincare products. A store manager approached us and then an idea came to us.. hmmm...we decided to ask if she would allow us to store our luggage at the store if we purchase a certain amount! At last, she was kind enough to let us store our stuff if we purchased 50 euro worth of products (which was easily achieved!). She even let us use the spa room to store our luggages and explained to us the city does not allow storage of luggage for tourists due to avoidance of bomb attacks. We thanked her and started our walking tour thinking that we had finally met a nice (english speaking) person in south France!
After we finished lunch, we started our walking tour... visited the church, bridge, blah blah blah. Then we went to this street called Rue de la Balance, which was a quiet street with around 8 to 10 souvenir stores right next to the Palais de Papes (the most famous tourist attraction). I bought a nice Avignon magnet at the first souvenir store and window shopped at four other stores. When we were about to exit the street, I found that my backpack was UNZIPPED and my small hello kitty bag was MISSING! and the worst thing about it was that my PASSPORT, hkid, credit cards, cash (not much coz it was near the end of the trip) were in the bag!
P and I panicked and quickly ran back to the shops to ask the shop owners if they had seen anyone with the stolen bag. But of course, the thief must have ran away immediately. So we asked for the nearest police station. When we ran to the municipal police station inside the walls of Avignon, the fat french speaking policman couldn't speak a word in english (fucking useless). Having just 1.5 hours before our arranged train ride, we immediately ran back to the pharmacy to get our luggages, ran to the federal police station outside the walls. From the pharmacy to the police station was a 15 mins walk, but when we were speed walking with two luggages each weighing at least 13kg, it felt like a 30 mins walk.
When we arrived at the police station, the french speaking chubby/blond policewomen asked us to fill some forms for reporting loss, and wait to press charge. But there were 10 people in front of me waiting to press charge (jeez! why were there so many people at 4pm?!! were there so much crimes in Avignon??) Then we decided to go back to Paris first since all the embassies were all located in Paris and we had to catch our train anyway! So we went to the train station and found that... our booked train ride was supposed to depart from another train station! It was the first time we got our train station wrong! Who could have thought such a small town had two train stations with similar names! We were destined to be unlucky on that day.
Luckily the TGV staff there helped us arrange the next available train so we could make it back to Paris on the same night. On our 3 hour train ride, I cut my 2 credit cards, P and I brainstormed a list of things we had to do in Paris to manage this crisis. One of the most urgent things was to open the lock of my luggage because my key was stolen too! If the luggage could not be opened, I would be stuck in my sweaty clothes and pants for the next 48 hours and my glasses were in the luggage! We thought about cutting it open and then buy a new luggage at Carrefour or wrap it back in saran wrap. But a less damaging way would be to destroy the lock. As soon as we got off the train, we ran to the information centre to find the train station staffs for help because they must have tools for repair and maintenance. And it must be Gare de Lyon, the huge train station that we were getting off, not the small station near our hotel.
I spoke to the black lady staff who didn't appear to be friendly (maybe because her english wasn't very good), she only asked me to "wait". I stood there, listening to her speaking in french to someone on the phone, but her hand gesture of describing the size of the lock ensured me she knew what she was doing. A few minutes later we saw an old man in uniform with a big pair of orange scissors in his hands. At that moment I really wanted to cry. I never thought a man with a pair of scissors could be so charming. The scene reminded me of Ben Affleck / Bruce Willis in Armageddon. We thanked the black lady and the scissors man and rushed to our hotel. It was already past 9pm and was too late and dangerous to find a police station.
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