Cruel irony!
 

I arrived in Paris yesterday.
This morning I hurried out to Easter Mass at Notre Dame.
It was beautiful, inspiring and Jammed.
When I returned to my apartment I found that my change purse and credit card purse were taken from my handbag at Mass.
Spent 2 hours on the phone cancelling credit cards and having customer service telling me to have a nice day!
They were very kind, and helpful and I hope that I'll get replacements tomorrow.
And I am very happy that our state does not put ss#s on driver's licenses.

i(still)loveparis

Try to have a nice day. #-O Do you know how they managed to do this?

I really don't. Something similar happened to me at Gare de Nord in 2000 but I deliberately changed my purse - one with a flap the covers the entire front and has an inner pocket that is flapped. I was standing at a post where we were packed like sardines and people were moving in and out. It is conceivable that someone who was pressed against my side could have gotten under the flap and felt the change purse and credit card holder.
Can't let it ruin the trip. I may have a problem picking up my train tickets to Strasbourg since they require the cc with which it was purchased.

So sorry this happened to you. I've read that churches are great places for pickpockets. Apparently otherwise cautious people seem to put their guard down when in a church. It gives me the willies every time I see one of those "beware of pickpockets" signs in a church.

That's an interesting thought about the SS number on a driver's license. Here if Florida they are indeed on them.

Money Belt!

Sorry to hear about you being robbed - what a horrible start to your holiday.

To others - a VERY good lesson why so many of us recommend money belts, especially in crowded tourist sites/cities.

Neo, I moved from Florida a little over a year ago and don't remember my SS# being on my DL. Is this something new?? If so, it's crazy.

I've lived in Florida for 20 years, and have never had my SSN on my DL :(

Green Dragon, I can't believe you said that. I just took my Driver's License out and lo and behold there is no SS number either. I've had one of those things for 32 years and would have sworn it was on there.

iloveparis,'I'm glad that did not make you sour, enjoy the rest of your trip
and happy Easter to you.

Neo, sometimes we don't see the forest for the trees :) Now, they do include your birth-year in it, but not the SSN.

iloveparis, I'm glad you aren't letting this incident ruin your vacation. Glad it wasn't anything unreplaceable!!!

Meanwhile thanks so much for bringing it up. My six year old DL expires on my birthday in July. I hadn't even thought about that and would have returned from Paris the following day with an expired driver's license to rent a car! I doubt I ever would have thought about that before leaving in May!

Didn't they used to have large signs at ND warning folks about the pickpockets?

Probably, as they do in tons of European churches these days. That's what is so sad. The most annoying one was an actual recorded warning at St. Croce in Florence that kept repeating and repeating both in Italian and English.

Let's not blame the victim. Those crooks are darn good at what they do.

I say catch them, tar and feather them and then deposit them on Elba for ten years minimum.

So sorry, and glad to see your upbeat attitude. The proverbial milk is spilt, but may I ask of these flaps were zipped or otherwise closed? One of the tricks a seasoned traveler gave me a few years back was to put a safety pin or two through the zipper (fabric, not the teeth of the zipper) of an internal compartment where $ and important documents are stashed when going into a crowded place. Of course, nothing is foolproof, and I have done this only a few tmes but it seems to make sense.

Oh honey, I AM sorry! What a spoiler for a morning spent in Notre Dame!
I hope you get everything in the am, and you can go on without anymore unpleasant happenings ...
Big hugs to you!! Scarlett

There is no SS # on my Fl drivers license either..but there is this terrible picture of a woman I do not know :O

LOL Scarlett. I wonder if it's the same woman on my drivers license who doesn't look like anyone I know. ;;)

:D mclaurie, she goes around sneaking into photo booths and mucking up otherwise lovely photographs ( I am sure)...

and she is right there at passport photos too - very elusive - gets right in the picture no matter what.

Thank you all for your sympathtic messages and suggestions. I appreciate the thoughts of so many of you regulars that I feel I know from these boards!
I'll be so much more careful from now on. Let the guard down for church on Easter Sunday! Actually, the Mass was so beautiful I sat down and lingered awhile feeling so refreshed and peaceful...

I'm so sorry this happened to you. I can certainly understand that you would be distracted during Mass. You're handling it very well and I admire your spirit.

I hope all will be wonderful for the rest of your vacation. Give yourself a special Paris treat when it's resolved.

I can empathize with you and send sympathy--I had my wallet stolen out of my purse oon the London underground. The station manager, who offered tea and sympathy, said that he had told his mother to put a fake wallet on top of the real one, and that's what I've done since then--as well as carrying credit cards in an inside-the-blouse thing.

iloveparis,

I am so sorry you had a bad start. But things will get much better, I am sure. Just a little warning to everybody: my friend almost had her wallet stolen in the metro in Paris, by a couple posing as tourists. They acted like they were consulting a map, while the woman had her hand in my friend's purse. Luckily, she felt the woman's hand and pull the purse, as we were riding up the scalator. We tried to get some help, but the couple ran away while we curse them off (in good Portuguese, because we could not remember the bad words in French...).

iloveparis,

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you! The same thing happened to my father when my family was travelling in Paris. My father had $1000 cash in his pocket (I know, not very smart! but none of us knew he even brought that much cash) and a pickpocket came in with us into a crowded metro, and in one hand grabbed all the cash away and attempted to run out the metro door. Fortunately, he felt the pickpocket, realized something was wrong, and screamed! The pickpocket wasn't able to get away, my father yanked the entire handful of cash back (some dollar bills were ripped, his hand was bloody), and my sister cursed out the pickpocket in French (to the shock of everyone on the train, I guess they were expecting us to look like passive tourists), and pushed him out of the door!

It was then that I decided that when travelling in Paris, it's very important for me not to carry too much cash and get a money belt. Sigh...

Take care iloveparis. Again, I'm sorry to hear about what happened.

That is such a shame. Kudos to you for not letting it sour the mood or your trip. And of course, it was not YOUR fault in any way, shape or form...100% of the blame belongs to the thief.

Did you file a police report? It won't help you get your money back, but it may help future travelers. When my wallet was stolen at the Gare du Midi in Brussels, the police there told me victims should always file reports because the stats help them get a clearer picture of the patterns of crime and also are useful in getting better police coverage for an area (because there were so many pickpockets and muggers working the Gare du Midi and people raised enough fuss, the train station now has its own police branch and canine patrols working the area almost 24/7....crime there has dropped substantially).

I wonder if there were any undercover officers at the service. If you can remember any details about the people who were directly near you, it might come in handy.