“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu
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Imagine yourself on your honeymoon or a trip of a lifetime. You have been working towards this trip and dreaming about it forever. You and your partner drag yourselves on the plane with severely oversized carry-on luggage. You are desperately trying to find a spot overhead for your bags. Other passengers are impatiently waiting behind you so they can also get on the plane. In the heat of the moment and under the pressure you and your partner feel, you begin sniping at each other in nervousness and frustration. You think you have found a spot for your bag, and in a rush, the space, a tight squeeze, you desperately try to make the bag fit. Suddenly your luggage busts open, and its contents fly like rain over all the passengers below. Your privacy is suddenly very public, and your personal belongings are everywhere!! Your “dream trip” has quickly become your worst nightmare even before you get off the ground!
(Scenario 2) Or if you didn’t have any problems with your carry-on luggage… You arrived at your dream destination safely. But your suitcases didn’t. How long until airlines can locate them? How long will it be your dream vacation that you can exist without your belongings?
(Scenario 3 ) If your bags arrived safely… You claimed them from the luggage rack after waiting “who knows how long?” But you have two huge suitcases. Where do you have to go from here with them? Are you taking them a country mile through the airport to your rental car? Do you have to have them jam-crammed into a taxi that will charge you extra to take them and then dump them off in front of your hotel? How many different places are you staying on your trip? How many times do you have to repeat this step on your journey?
Are you taking a train anywhere? Dragging those bags on and off the trains and finding space for them is a nightmare. Especially when the trains are packed, imagine pulling into your train stop and going to get your bags off the luggage rack to realize the travelers who got off the stop before you took the wrong bags. Suddenly you know they have your bags!! Who are they? And where are your bags?!?! Hopefully, the bags had some I.D. on them, and the people who now have them will have a way of contacting you.
Or perhaps your bags were taken on purpose. Someone or several people had been watching you the whole time on the train. They realized you were travelers who weren’t moving around so quickly with those large bags. So they decided they were ripe for the taking, and they took your luggage off the train a few stops ago. Now your bags are gone forever.
Imagine you are in Venice, Italy (where I currently live). It’s a city always filled with tourists and plenty of suitcases. But Venice has no cars or traditional taxis when you step off the train. You can take a water taxi. But the minimum fare for a water taxi starts at 60 euros—certainly, the cost is more when you have large suitcases.
Your next option is to take a Vaporetto (waterbus) to your hotel or apartment. The Vaporettos are always full, and taking large bags on and off-board the boat takes work. Especially with many other tourists you crammed onto the Vaporetto doing the same thing. After you get off, you must get from the Vaporetto stop to your hotel or apartment. The only way to do that is to walk with your bags.
Lastly, you can walk from the train station. But did you know Venice has over 400 little bridges connecting the island? You need to go over some of those small or large bridges (with your luggage) to get where you are going. And many, many times, you are doing this in extreme heat or rain. Not fun at all. Certainly not an activity for a vacation.
With these few examples, you can at least imagine yourself in one of these scenarios. So the obvious question to ask is, why would we want to subject ourselves to a situation like this? Do you think bringing that giant suitcase is worth the hassle? Do you NEED everything on this trip that is in those suitcases? Is it worth the risk of something going wrong? Is it worth the risk of losing our belongings? Of course, it’s not.
Travel Smart Pack Light wants to help you take the work and stress out of your travel experiences. It allows you to plan better and use the best methods, travel tools, and accessories to enjoy the travel experience better. Travel is a joy! And it should be for you too!!