Disclaimer, this is a One Dress story without actually taking a wedding dress shot. Don’t worry, the dress will come out shortly.

Jeff and I used to discuss whether or not we might apply for the Amazing Race early in our marriage. Life then got in the way, then the Pandemic, and next thing we knew we blinked and were married for 16 years. This year saw the return of our travel adventures, dress project, and the unexpected. As we booked this trip, I had some trepidation about my role as translator and navigator for the Paris Olympics. My French is a bit rusty, and it had been 30 years since my days living in Paris and trekking through Europe by train. I planned to brush up on my French and I paid attention to booking our travel in and out of Paris, as I knew that Paris during the Olympics would be a chaotic zoo. We would endure the madness for the race walk and then get the hell out of the city.

After an exhaustive search of destinations easily assessable from the TGV (European High Speed Train), I settled on the picturesque, coastal town of Le Croisic. While I wanted to get to the Cote D’Azur. It was a bit far and likely to be just as nuts as Paris, since that is where most of France retreats during the month of August. Our initial travel by train from Brussels to Bruges was not without a few missteps. Once we were settled en route from Brussels to Paris I felt relieved, I had booked the train properly.

Finding our seats was not simple. After initially depositing ourselves on the wrong car and dragging our bags a few cars on the moving train we were seated properly. Under 20 minutes later, we pulled into our stop to change trains in Lille. The unthinkable happened. My phone was gone. I had it when the conductor checked our tickets on my phone and now pulling in it was nowhere to be found. The train was quite dark. Fear and panic overtook my senses. Jeff tried his best to get me to breathe and start a methodical search.  But my mind raced, since our tickets were only on my phone. Panic ensued while we frantically searched every square inch of our seats, the bathroom, and everything in between. As the train slowed to a stop Jeff found it between our seats.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we grabbed our bags and hopped off. Seeking directions to the next train we were advised to hurry because it was a 10-minute walk and we had well 10 minutes (those of you who know train travel in Europe know that if you are not AIS (Ass in Seat) on time, you have missed your train. As we started to move with purpose, I heard Jeff say something that did not register until he repeated it, “I grabbed the wrong bag.”

Time stood still my first thought was we’re going to miss the train! Then Jeff said something that made my skin go clammy, it was his bag with all of his camera equipment. After the horrible reality set in, we knew we needed to go right back, skip the train and explain what we had just done. As the full weight of the situation set in my brain ceased to function and while I could understand the French being spoken, I was suddenly mute. I, of course, blamed myself. If not for the freaking phone scramble we would not be in this mess. Jeff of course was not pointing fingers, but I felt at fault all the same. Compounding this, as we caught our breath, we also realized the wedding dress was in the same bag. A total disaster.

As logic took over hysterics, we first checked the Samsung bag tracker that Jeff not only put in our checked luggage but his carry-on bag for just such an emergency. He checked, and the bag was still on the train. It was time to withdraw from the Karma bank.

After speaking with many sympathetic people in the station they were able to call the conductor. The wait seemed intolerable, but he found the bag and said it would be held at CDG airport. The irony, that we tried hard to avoid CDG was not lost on us. We had great hope, but knew this was far from over. Would the bag be intact?  We had only two days to the race walks and no backup plan.

We expected to buy a new ticket but they bought it for us. The people at CDG were helpful but no one seemed to have any idea where this bag was. We navigated to within feet of the bag, and yet, we were sent from one office to another. The consensus was that it was locked behind a closed door and we’d need an appointment to retrieve it. We didn’t accept that, pointing the tracker and then we were directed to yet another office. Drumroll please. At first they teased us, but the ruse didn’t last long, because they all smiled and brought out our bag. They apologized that they just entered the bag in the system and would have to charge us 10 euros. It was the best 10 euros we ever spent.

3 and a half hours behind, we were relieved to get in the hot, smelly metro in route to our Air BnB. We picked it specifically, it was within ~1km of the race. What we didn’t pay attention to is that there was no AC and it was up 8 flights of steps. Out of practice, our luggage was far heavier than it should be and took 4 trips up to the apartment. For those of you that don’t like math, that’s 32 flights after a very long day. All that said, we were elated to be where we should be, with all our belongings, and of course each other.

One positive note, we were able to reach out to the owner of the bag we mixed up and made sure they knew where to get it.