$15 million lesson for Saudi princess

Along with "passports, tickets, money," every traveler ought to repeat a second mantra: "Don't bring it if you can't afford to lose it."

A Saudi princess is repeating that lesson to herself after she lost all her valuables on vacation.

Staying at a luxury hotel in Sardinia, Italy, she locked jewels and cash worth €11 million ($15.6 million) in her hotel room safe. But because the safe was embedded in the wall only with an easy-to-break coating of silicone, it took only 10 minutes for expert thieves to make off with everything, safe and all, and escape undetected while she was having dinner.

In Italy, there's been a rash of five-fingered discounts at five-star resorts. A Moroccan businessman lost about €150,00 (nearly $213,000) the same way last week, and a German businessman lost about $1.4 million in cash and jewelery when the safe was swiped from his hotel room in Portofino, Italy.