DING DONG!
Guess what UPS dropped off at our condo's doorstep the other night?
As some of you may recall, I wrote a post awhile back about the traumatic experience of losing my precious Bata boots in Italy, just a week after I had bought them.
Many of you wrote in with your condolences and even suggestions and offerings of help. I even hit up a few up my friends who were in Paris and Vienna, but alas, despite their efforts, the boots were nowhere to be found.
My hunch was that the Bata boots were ONLY available in Italy, which posed a great problem. I didn't know anyone in Italy.
So I scoured the interweb and searched for a personal shopper out of Rome. After querying a few of them, my angel was sent to me. Barbara Lessona is a young, fiesty personal shopper who operates out of Rome. I will write more on her and the services she offers on my other blog shortly (because, if you are looking for a great time/shopping spree in Rome, PLEASE seek her out, she is amazing) so I will get to the point here.
Barbara scoured Rome for me and was able to find one pair, in my size too. She bought them for me and I wired her the money through my bank. All was well until we came to the problem of shipping.
DHL charged an arm and a leg to ship the boots from Rome to Vancouver. After all, it's not easy to smuggle Italian leather goods out of the country without paying hefty duty fees ON TOP of a hefty shipping fee.
Luckily we came to a sort of madcap agreement. Barbara would give the boots to her pilot friend who was flying to Argentina, with a few days stop over in New York. He would take the boots to New York and then I would arrange for UPS to pick up the boots from the concierge at his hotel and ship to it where I am now, in Palm Springs.
It almost seemed too easy.
OK, it was a huge pain in the ass, both on her end and on my end. But in the end, I got my boots the cheapest way possible and my life is now complete :P (well, at least in a boots-kinda way)
To read more about my personal shopping saviour, click here
