A Complete Travel Experience: Quito Crime

My parents once bought be a model San Francisco trolley car that had a knob at the bottom that, when turned, played the song "I Lost My Heart In San Francisco."  My souvenir from Quito should be a model trole (the name for Quito´s busses) that plays"I Lost My Wallet in Ecuador´s Capital."  After having guarded our wallets all over the world, two days before we were going back to the states, Michelle and I were both pickpocketed and relieved of our credit cards and some cash in a crowded bus.  They had to unzip Michelle´s pocket to get to the wallet.  I had ironically just purchased a new wallet that was sitting empty in my other pocket.  Only the full wallet was taken (these were pros).  When we reported the theft, we had no real hope that we would recover anything (this was confirmed by the not-so-helpful tourist police officer who was the only one in the police office who spoke no English), but we also did not expect that the police officer would know prior to our saying so on what trolley and at what stop our wallets were taken.  Thanks to the Quito police for not warning passengers with helpful signs or, I don´t know, taking one of the million of officers everywhere else and assigning them to this particular station.  Fortunately nothing of huge value was lost, and at least we can roundly say that our travel experience was well rounded :)

But, later in the day, we took a taxi and without a proper wallet, two dollars and my room key had fallen out into the back seat when I left.  The taxi driver got out and ran a block to return BOTH the key and the two dollars.  Then, later that day we met a rabbi in the mall of Quito whose happiness to meet other Jews in Quito ran very deep.  By all accounts, this day was one of great interest!  Things have a strange way of balancing out.