As a new tourist to Paris, Cassie had been looking forward to seeing popular sites like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe…
...until she met a panhandler who placed an ancient gypsy curse on her.
What most Paris tourist material won’t tell you is that the city is a mecca for panhandlers, especially near popular tourist sites. Unfortunately, Cassie found this out the hard way when she was approached for change by an old woman near the Eiffel Tower. Having just arrived in Europe, she didn't have a single Euro to give to the woman. Outraged, the woman called to her friends, who quickly surrounded Cassie and proceeded to place the "evil gypsy eye" on her, which involved plenty of spitting, hissing and cursing. Needless to say, Cassie made a hasty exit.
She thought nothing of the gypsy curse until later that night, when her mother ended up spraining her ankle by falling down a flight of stairs. After getting her ankle checked out at the hospital, Cassie and her mother then returned to their hotel room, where they had discovered that a 100-euro meal had been brought up for them by room service. But it was certainly not on the house, as the hotel refused to acknowledge that a mistake had been made, leaving Cassie and her mother with quite an expensive French dinner to eat.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the women ended up experiencing a whole array of unfortunate travel mishaps (from rained-out tours to losing a credit card), which would have been unfortunate on their own - however, since Cassie was convinced that the gypsy curse was in full affect, the mishaps became hilarious. After missing their flight back to the States, Cassie and her mother were extremely close to visiting the old panhandler to get the curse lifted off of them.
Fortunately, they were able to get on a flight back to the States, where their streak of bad luck ended - for now. Turns out that the evil eye loses its power during the crossing over the Atlantic!
The Gypsy's Curse
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