The Knock-Off

I always believed that my bag would turn up. (I still live in hope!) I truly thought it would arrive the night before we were scheduled to leave Italy. I was also sure that if I bought another bag that my bag would turn up. That's karma. Or maybe it's Murphy's Law. At any rate, we went to a shop in Spoleto that specialized in luggage and handbags just to get an idea of the cost, or to scoop up a bargain.

This shop was a bit different than most of the shops I'm accustomed to. There were no prices on anything. The young lady minding the store had to get out a book and look up every single price. Sorry, but that got tedious for me. I can't imagine how she must have felt giving me the price on half the bags in the store. But I suppose it gave her something to do.

It might have been better if I'd been happy with the prices I was hearing. The bottom line was that I would have to pay over three times more than I'd paid in the US for a bag of similar size and quality. Yikes! I just didn't want to do that because #1. I'm going to get my bag back and I don't need two the same size and #2. I'm sure there is a limit to what British Airways will pay for a replacement bag and it is probably not three times the cost of the original bag. 

I left the shop without making a purchase, still hoping that my bag would turn up. We went into the market to get some porchettas (serious man food) when Mark and Mike spotted some bags. They called for Ros and me to come back and take a look. For 25 Euros I could get a knock-off duffel bag with rollers. The knock-off of the Dolce and Gabbana bag was so obviously a knock-off, not even as subtle as the Louis Vuitton or Coach knock-off bags that are so common. But then there was this one:

I was pretty sure it was a knock-off of something but I didn't know what. But I did know that this was a bag that could be easily spotted on the conveyor belt. And only 25 Euros! A bargain compared to those 300 Euro bags I'd been looking at in the shop. I thought it was a bit ugly, but it only had to make one trip home - how could I pass it up??

When we got in to London, I was (gratefully) pulling my bag off the conveyor when a very stylish lad standing near me said "Oh! Did you buy that in Italy?"
"Yes, I did."
Then he said, "I saw them in a shop in Florence and just LOVED them!"

Perhaps it's not as ugly as I originally thought. But it is still a knock-off. Apparently a knock-off of something so exclusive I don't know what it is.