Keeping luggage safe in trunk

Lock the windows and the doors and take anything you can not live without with you.

The same precautions you would take in America if you were traveling with luggage in your trunk.
In spite of what you read online, my car has been broken into at least 6 times in California, including twice in the car ports of two HOAs where I lived (but mostly at suburban BART train stations) and never in Italy (where I lived for almost 30 years of my life and visit yearly).
What would you do if you were visiting San Francisco (or Washington, DC) with luggage in your car?

Some travelers to Italy, including me, take trains if there's regular train service to our destinations, and probably 90% of typical destinations in Italy have regular and affordable train service. We only rent a car in the rare event that we want to see a destinations that doesn't have regular train service, and then only rent the car for those days, not for the whole trip.

In the US, renting a car is the easy and obvious choice (outside of the few areas of the US that have regular train service). But in Europe, don't rent a car just because I'm an American and that's what we automatically do.

Just one of the many reasons to minimize, or avoid entirely, car rental is that then you don't have the dilemma of leaving stuff in your car, because obviously there's a limit to what you can do to protect things in your trunk from being stolen. If they want it, and your number comes up, they'll get it, because your stuff isn't with you.

Linda,

remember that the couple involved in the story you reference had just rushed by car all the way from Venice and were late for their Vatican visit. They parked as close as they could and ran to their destination. There is some thought that they put the backpacks into the trunk - facts are a bit vague - then ran off. Anybody in the vicinity would have witnessed the panic riven run and known they weren't coming back soon. We don't even know if they were parked legally.

To avoid their problems do all your rearranging well before you park. When you park, just casually step out of the car and lock it up, and wander off. Maybe don't talk much either. Then they won't exactly know who you are, what you have, or when you will be back.

I prefer to park underground.

Even 17 years ago there were tales of luggage stolen from trunks. We always locked our luggage and even took a long thin bike chain with padlock to lock them to the trunk. Of course we only had one or two stops with luggage, but was prepared. Never used the lock and never had problems, but followed Nigel's advice. Be prepared before final destination. If no luggage visible, who knows you have any?

Don’t open the trunk in the parking lot! Keep your day bag and anything essential in the main part of the car and take it with you when you leave. The luggage stays in the trunk never to be disturbed until you get to your hotel for the night . If you need to access it, do it before you go park.

Opening the trunk in the lot/street parking alerts a possible thief that you have luggage in there. Similarly, yelling “honey, do you have the iPads or are they in the trunk” would be a bad idea.

When we spent a month touring Spain & Portugal last year we brought with us one of those steering wheel locks with long bicycle locks to lock our luggage together & to the suv's trunk. This may seem paranoid but we read that this area has a lot of breakins and if they looked in and saw our preventions they'd go to another ones car. It as worth it for peace of mind. We don't leave anything in our car here at home in Toronto either; but with a car full of 4 adults luggage we didn't want to take a chance.
We never leave important documents or medication at any time in our vehicle.
Jean

Make sure the car has a luggage cover if a hatchback and that your bags don’t distort or push it up. Don’t access the luggage after parking. Leave nothing visible. Hope for the best. As others noted, and I did in the Rome thread, isn’t there an opiate problem in your home state?

We use the pig pen approach. We open the luggage fully and scatter some of the contents around the trunk. Thieves would have to reassemble to steal everything . We also don't leave any English language guides visible. That said, after nearly 50 Italian trips always with a car (often with French plates) we've never had a problem.

We drove from Rome FCO to our agriturismo just outside Greve with our luggage in the back of our rental SUV. It was not visible. We stopped several times on the way, including having lunch at an Autogrill on the Autostrada. We had no problems.

You've gotten good advice, don't access your luggage when you stop. You should be fine.

That's the problem with hysterical posts that led to your question. They make folks like you overly concerned. I remember responding to your post when you were planning. What did you decide?

I hope you have a wonderful trip! You're going to love Italy!

If you’re only stopping at rest stops, one remains with the car while the other uses the facilities and/or picks up something to drink. That way, someone is always with the vehicle. For Orvieto, others had good suggestions.

The best advice: train whenever possible and be as diligent, security-wise, as you would in any major American city.

We rented a car on the last trip to Italy to A) drive from Milan to Venice because we stopped to show our children their great-grandmother's home in a little town that no train serves, and B) during our week in Tuscany because it's just easier to get where we wanted to go for that week. Other than that, we were on trains between destinations. Way more fun, comfortable and easy than driving - though driving on Italian highways seems easier than U.S. freeways!

We've been blessed with the opportunity to travel to various countries in Europe, Central America, and Asia. We are as security conscious as we are in major American cities, and - knock wood, perhaps - we've never been pick-pocketed, robbed, or otherwise vandalized. I hate wearing a money belt, so I don't. I simply keep as much cash on me as I'm going spend for a couple of days. I keep one credit card with me, too, when we're out. In Italy, in a couple of places, people wanted to see the passport when we're using the credit card, so I kept that with me.

We leave everything else where we stay. I haven't ever used the safes in hotels. And it seems the lodging we otherwise rent is safe, so nothing has happened.

On this last trip -- especially in Rome -- compared to a previous trip there weren't the huge numbers of "centurions" wanting me to take a photo with them or people miraculously levitating wanting my attention. And in the train station, though I was hyper-focused in crowds, the police no longer let people onto the platforms without tickets, so there weren't people "helping" tourists. There weren't even people at ticket machines helping tourists, either. But the train stations were very crowded and ripe for a potential issue.

Speaking of hyper-focused... I do stay very aware when in crowds of the potential to get pick-pocketed. But no more so that if I was in a subway car in NYC...

Be aware. Always. But have fun. Always.

Thanks for the advice! As you all can probably guess, I’m not a frequent international traveler and have never had any trunk issues at home. It makes sense to me to just not be an obvious tourist coming right from the airport, opening the trunk for all to see. The pig pen approach is pretty novel though. 😊

Cars aren’t broken into in DC?
In SF, you can hide everything to no avail. Thieves break in in the hopes of finding good stuff whether they can see it or not. Many cars now have easy access to the trunk via the back passenger seat, so putting stuff in trunk is useless. We leave nothing, ever, in our cars when parking on the street or paid garages.
Because of my SF experience, i have to confess it does worry me to leave luggage in the trunk in Europe even though i’m an experienced Europe traveler and car renter.

And how does taking trains instead of renting a car solve the problem? If you stop en route to visit a town do you schlep your suitcase and day bag around with you? Most train stations do not have luggage storage anymore.

If we will need something from the trunk before our destination, we pull over in a low key spot a mile or more from where we’re arriving and do any trunk activities then. We transfer what we’ll need to take with us into our daybags in the car and take those with us when we park at our destination. Thus takes some forethought, but we’ve been fortunate.

I worry way more about any crime in the US than I ever do in Europe. Sure, things happen. Take precautions. But no need for excessive worry. Enjoy your vacation.