Christie and Luke

Literally. Most times people say “we were robbed” talking about how they were not given the full extent of something they believe should have been delivered or the referee made a bad call against their team, but we were literally robbed from right under our noses. Here is my side of the story as it happened and I will fill in the details afterwards.

Christie and I wanted to get a good start to our day so we went to Starbucks for some morning coffee while we went over what we wanted to do for the day. We found a nice table outside where we could enjoy the beautiful weather and spread out our maps and guides so we could plan the best day possible.

Here is a little setup for the story. In the outside cafe there was another couple, probably from the Netherlands, sitting at the table next to us. Shortly after we sat down a “local” looking couple came and sat at the table behind Christie.

After maybe 5 minutes a random lady came up and asked the couple from the Netherlands some question very loudly and was also very animated. The gentlemen said “I don’t know” and the lady kept rambling. The “local” guy jumped up to help out the random lady and Christie jumped up and said “You took my wallet” and as you may guess I was utterly confused. After her statement registered in my brain I stood up and looked at the guy that was trying to walk away still trying to figure out what was going on. Christie then said the guy stole her wallet and cell phone and the guy very quickly returned both of them. I looked at the guy and said “mas?” which means “more” in Spanish trying to see if he had anything else of ours and he appeared dumbfounded. Christie didn’t notice anything else missing and in the confusion the guy his lady  friends walked away. As soon as they were out of sight Christie noticed that her camera was also missing. We decided to try and go after them but they blended into the crowd and were never seen again.

That was my take as it happened. Here are some interesting points that Christie mentioned. When the “local” couple sat behind her she noticed her purse moved so she pulled it closer under her seat thinking the lady must have brushed it with her foot while sitting down. As the local guy jumped up to help the random lady, the woman from the Netherlands said to Christie “I think she messed with your purse” and the connection was made in Christie’s mind about the purse moving when the lady sat down and the guy trying to flea. After she realized what happened she looked very quickly for the things she thought were important (wallet and cell phone) but overlooked other things that were in her bag.

After reflecting back on it with Christie here are some of the important details that were only noticed in hindsight:

• The local couple came and sat with the only other two tables when there were probably 20 others available without anyone around.
• The local couple did not have coffee or anything from Starbucks.
• Christie shouldn’t have had her bag under the seat and should have had it in her lap.
• I did nothing to help. I didn’t grab the guy and keep him there until Christie went through her bag, I didn’t scare anybody, I was about as helpful as a Sham-Wow with no spills to clean up.
• The bathroom door had a notice on it saying “Professional bag thieves operate in this area, keep watch on all of your personal items.” This would have been more beneficial on the front door.

They did get away with her camera so hopefully they felt terrible when they saw the photos of her getting ready for our wedding. Luckily we only had a few photos on there from London so we didn’t lose an entire trip and I also brought my camera as backup. So far we have some good pictures from Barcelona but I didn’t bring my cable so you will have to wait to see them until we get back. Of course this is based on the precipice that my camera does not get stolen as well.

We are safe and recovered the items that were of the most importance to us so we are thankful of that. We learned from the experience and have a story to tell so all things given this wasn’t that bad of a situation.

From somewhere in the Mediterranean, Luke and Christie