My parents are not travelers.
So when I sprung a cruise on them last year, I knew I had to make things as simple as possible.
I’ve learned through the years that you prepare for each trip differently based on what you want out of the experience. While they’ve been insistent on carrying their beat-up duffel bags, I knew we could do better.
I thought back to my first cruise a couple years ago and how tired we were waiting in line at port.
Then I imagined my parents – both with some level of mobility issues — them trying to lug heavy bags on their shoulders at port – exhausted before they even board the ship. I don’t want that for them.
A cruise should feel like a luxury and I want them to live it up. Why not have the right gear to optimize the experience?
I told them to save their duffel bags for weekend trips to visit family. I don’t want to see them struggling to lug those heavy bags across the country and back.
We’re simple folk. We don’t need all the bells and whistles, but this situation calls for some rolling luggage – preferably hard-shell with wheels that rotate 360 degrees.
Luckily, I had just bought a set for my boyfriend a few years prior and it served him well.
It doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. I went with this set. They were solid — an excellent value for the price and held up well for his trips to Oklahoma and California.
Plus the color stands out on the checked bag carousel at the airport.
I look forward to reporting back, but I have no doubt this is the better option.
Sometimes rugged is the way to go
When my boyfriend and I traveled to Nicaragua earlier this year, we knew we wanted to travel light. We knew it wasn’t going to be a glamorous vacation. We knew we’d spend a lot of time hiking volcanoes, staying in hostels and quite honestly, “winging it,” for the most part — and we were OK with that.
We did our research. For the most part, we knew what to expect. Even in February, it was going to be hot and humid. We didn’t need to take a lot. We knew we’d spend a lot of time using public transportation and traveling from hostel to hostel. What the heck — we decided to ditch the luggage. We opted to go on our first real backpacking trip. More specifically, carry-on only.
My boyfriend and I spent hours…days…weeks…maybe even months shopping for the right backpacks. We watched countless YouTube videos and read dozens of articles and reviews from travel bloggers. Then when we narrowed our search down to a few bags, we read over the airline’s measurements for carry-on bags and did it all over again.
We knew we would become well aquatinted with these packs and wanted to make sure we made the right investment.
Needless to say, we had very different ideas of what we needed.
I’m just shy of 5’ and work an office job. I’m not built to carry a ton of weight and that had to reflect in what I packed. Find out more about how we packed for the trip here.
I wanted something compact that still held enough to get me through the two-week trip.
He’s about 5’8 and more athletic. He wanted the option of a water pouch and pockets that made it easy to pull out things like a wallet, lip balm, a water bottle, bug spray and other daily necessities.
The tougher part was making sure they were comfortable.
I ended up going with this Patagonia bag. I love that it’s lightweight, compact and still holds a lot for the size. I used packing cubes to keep things organized, but I don’t think it was necessary.
Patagonia was running a sale right after New Year’s, so I did get about 10% off.
Plus, I got a percentage back through Rakuten (get $30 back automatically with this link). It’s a browser extension that saves you money just by signing up and having the extension activated.
Couldn’t be happier — in fact, we agreed we wanted to go on more carry-on only trips.
It’s a fun challenge and an exercise in taking only what’s important.
Leave a Reply