My luggage didn't make the connection.
Heathrow to Paris. Quick connection. It happens. I know it happens. I was not entirely surprised.
What I was not prepared for was that it would take three days to arrive.
Three days.
Which meant I arrived in Paris with a tote bag, the clothes on my back, and approximately zero of the carefully selected outfits I had spent two weeks packing and repacking before this trip.
So I did what any reasonable person in Paris would do.
I went shopping.
A blouse from the flea market — beautiful and slightly mysterious. A skirt from a little boutique near the hotel. And from a vintage shop in the Marais, a housecoat-style jacket that had very clearly belonged to a French grandmother and that I wore as a dress for two straight days because honestly it was fabulous.
By the time I had assembled my €800 Parisian emergency wardrobe, I had also accidentally had the best shopping day of my life.
And then, on day three, while sitting in the hotel lobby watching CNN on the television in the corner, I saw it.
My suitcase.
My orange suitcase with the pink bow on the handle — the very bow I'd tied on specifically so I could spot it at baggage claim — was being filmed as part of a CNN story about the Heathrow baggage handling system collapse. It was sitting in a mountain of abandoned luggage the size of a small European nation.
It arrived on day four. I had already fallen a little bit in love with my French grandmother jacket.
I still had a wonderful trip.
Which is the whole point, really. The luggage is not the trip. 🎀
