Stolen or Lost Passport Tips
It happens. It happened on our last Culinary Trip to Paris to a much loved guest and I learned a lot. So first hand, from le Cheval's mouth, remember this advice.
Always take a photocopy or snap a pic of your passport on your phone. A photocopy is a little easier to read. Leave your real passport in the safe in your hotel room with an extra credit card, and carry your photocopy around with you. When you shop and they need your passport for VAT tax, they don't need to see the actual passport. The copy or picture of your passport on the phone should supply them with the passport number they need, so leave it in your room safe. If not, they can call your hotel and get it from the front desk, as you have to show your passport to the hotel desk upon arrival. However, if you haven't done this, and it does get stolen or lost, this is what you do:
1. Keep your cool.
2. Go back to your hotel and report it. They will call the last place you may have used it and see if it is there somewhere.
3. If it is early in the day, yay! Embassies close ridiculously early, so if it is after 1:00, you are out of luck. The American Embassy closes at 2:30 every afternoon in Paris. That was news to me. No American hours there!
Losing or getting your passport stolen is NOT considered an emergency. I know it sure seems like it when it happens, but it happens so frequently, that it is not. Gettting murdered or kidnapped IS an emergency. Passport stuff is de rigeur for an embassy.
4. You will need a police report to take to the embassy. Ask your hotel where the police station is and go there right away. Expect to spend a little time. It is the government and like all government offices in the world, there are forms to fill out! And behind-the-desk chatting and perhaps a little flirting to do. But kindness and a cool head is key here to getting them to speed anything up.
5. Change your airline flight if needed. The debacle happened to my guest on Friday afternoon and the embassy had already closed. She was supposed to fly out on Saturday! The embassy didn't open again until Monday morning at 7:30. So I changed her flight to Tuesday morning. Monday morning would have been pushing it and she would not have made her flight for the early afternoon. If you live in NYC, you have a ton of flights, so maybe you can. If not, allow yourself some grace here and don't stress yourself anymore by risking missing your next flight.
6. Go to the embassy early. The embassy's recording and the advice on the internet said we had to make an appointment, but that was NOT the case. When we called Monday morning to make said appointment, they were not taking them and they said to come in at 9:30, yet the website had said 7:30. Be prepared for different information from the American Embassy website to the actual steps they want you to do in the city you are in. I am here to tell you.
7. Take a little cash with you. You will need to take a new photo from their little booth and it is a few Euros. If all your cash was stolen, you will have to have money wired to you or get a cash advance on your credit card to replace your passport. That is why it is smart to stash an extra credit card in the safe in your room, along with your passport.
8. There was a long line in front of the door, across the street when we arrived. We learned after waiting for a few moments and noticing no one was speaking English, that it was for foreigners needing visas, student tours, etc. As an American, we were able to skip that line, cross the street, and go right in. The line is across the street, not right in front of the entrance, for security reasons.
9. They will search your bag and take weird stuff out. They will take your phone, so deal with it. They put all of our lipsticks and anything containing moisture in a plastic bag, put our purses through a scanner, gave us our purses minus the stuff they removed, and handed us a laminated pass. When we were finished, we returned the pass and got all our things back. These were not English speaking Americans and I didn't ask why they needed my lipsticks. They have their rules and we were there to do our thing and leave. Rocking the boat or causing a scene wasn't one of them. Everyone there was nice.
10. There was ONE person at the table to help us. There IS a bathroom. There IS a coffee machine. (It's good you brought some Euros, #wasIright?) You begin by taking a new picture in a little photo booth. Then you go to the table and a person will help you fill out a new form on the old fashioned computer. If she likes you, she will help you skip the dumb questions on that computer and then you can answer them orally after she prints it out and she will write the answers in. She kept telling my guest, skip that question, skip this question. In our case, if we had answered them on the computer, it would have opened another portal and we would have been down a rabbit hole. A woman next to us was being uncooperative and our helper wasn't interested in assisting her after a while because she was being difficult. I felt sorry for her and if I hadn't been so focused on MY guest, I would have tried to help her. This is THE time to try to say a few french words to smooth your path.
11. After your form is filled out, she will take it to the right person in the next room. You will also go to that next room and soon someone will call your name. You'll answer a few questions. You will pay a fee et Voila you get a temporary passport for a year. I don't know if your Global Entry will work since it was tied up to your old number if you have G.E.
12. I would say the whole process took about 2 hours and about a hundred Euros. Really not too bad.
13. Later that afternoon, I met some very nice Americans and we went to Le Souffle with them for dinner.
Our new California mother/daughter friends.
The next day we went to Mt. St. Michele. We made the most of being stranded for sure. There was nothing we could do, so why not enjoy France a few more days?
In summary, keep your head. Go to the police station, then take your police form to the Embassy. Change your flight ASAP if you need to. Find out the Embassy's hours and call that morning to find out when you should actually come as it may be different from the website and the recording you will get if you call during off hours. Get there a little early. Take some real money but not tons. Take a credit card if you have it becuase there is a fee for a new passport. You should be able to go to the front of any line outside because you are an American--unless it is full of Americans who have lost their passports, of course. Expect the unexpected and don't worry. This is your government establishment and they are there for you. That being said, almost everyone working there was not actually American. I thought it would be full of tall, smiling Americans stationed abroad but it was absolutely not the case. Also don't expect it to look like the place Jason Bourne went when he met Marie for the first time. You will be in a few back rooms, not the place where candlelit foreign dinners take place. Lastly, I realize it is a huge inconvenience and added expense. I think many travel insurance policies will pay for additional days hotel and food if you lose your passport. Sometimes the cost of the insurance negates a few days extra in a hotel though, so in the end, it is your judgement call.
This post is not glib; it's meant to reassure you that you will get your situation solved. Although at the time, it may seem like the end of the world and you will get home, so try to make limoncello out of les citrons if this unfortunate situation happens to you.