If you are going to be taking a vacation focused on driving, hiking,
museum hopping, or just wandering, try to travel light.
- See if you can get
by with one, medium sized bag that contains all that you will need for the
duration of the trip
- Although it does not work for everyone or for
every vacation, you should try traveling with one piece of luggage in
the form of a bag that fits under an airplane seat.
- In general, you should choose a soft-sided
bag, approximately 9x22 x14 constructed of durable material.
- An example of this type of bag is shown
below. We travel with an Eagle Creek product, a company that makes top quality luggage for
the mobile traveler.
- A good quality bag of this type is sold at the
Rick Steves travel web site.
The ideal trip luggage. The map is shown to
provide scale
Traveling with one, moderate sized, suitcase makes
for greater mobility than lugging around large suitcases.
- When we used to carry large bags, it never failed that halfway
through the trip my shoulders and arms would start hurting from carrying
our herd of luggage.
- Each bag seemed to weigh a ton. When we returned
home, my wrists and elbows would ache for weeks.
- To top it off, I would
carry home clothes that I had not worn.
- For some reason I was
never invited to the queen’s banquet and did not need all that sporty
stuff I lugged halfway around the world.
- Of course, carrying a small bag helps avoid the
comment made by a porter at a hotel in Hawaii who asked us "Have you
heard of washing machines?"
After deciding to carry a single, medium sized, bag
on our trips, my aches and pains related to bag carrying disappeared. It
was easy to pack and unpack. Getting ready to leave the hotel and pack the
car took a lot less time. And choosing what to wear was a lot easier.
However, I appreciated the small bag most of all because they gave me a flexibility that I
had never dreamed of when I carried multiple, large bags.
When you pull one bag out of your closet to pack for a trip, the first
thing you are going to say is “I can’t fit my stuff in there”. Well, you
can fit what you need in there but you have to be flexible and practical.
- It is a little known fact that the United States
is not the only place in the world that has laundry facilities.
- When we travel in Europe, we often take our
soiled clothes to a local laundry that provides laundry and folding
services. We drop off the clothes and pick them up at
the end of the day.
- Doing so is neither expensive nor inconvenient.
- Between trips to the laundry, we wash
whatever we need in the bathroom sink at our hotel and hang them to
dry overnight.
- Many hotel tubs come with a built in clothes
line.
- To be safe you can buy a portable clothes
line constructed of two suction cups connected by strong cord and
use it whenever you need to dry something.
- Also, take a couple of packs of Woolite
(available at most travel stores). It takes up little space
and really gets clothes clean).
So, if we have convinced you to do some laundry, how about trying to
cut your clothes down to just enough to fit in one 9x22x14-inch bag?
- You will need to reduce the amount of clothes
that you normally would carry in a larger suitcase.
- If the seasons require
travel with a jacket, wear it on the flight.
- If you want to take a sports
coat, wear it on the flight.
- In order to deal with inclement weather, we suggest that you pack or
wear a waterproof parka and be prepared to layer clothes, if the weather
turns cold.
- It is necessary to be ingenious to fit everything into one bag. We give
you some pointers in our articles on
packing and
clothes selection.
We think traveling with a small bag will work for you if you are willing to give it a try.
You might want to experiment with a single bag on a local trip. We
routinely take ours on European excursions varying from 10 to 20 days in
length.
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