I have felt uninspired to write about my trip to Portugal for many reasons and no reasons at all; jet lag, post-travel slump, who knows.
Before I left, I did searches for travel tips. Many of the Don’t Travel Without These Items articles were stupid. You don’t need your round hair drying brush!
Here are my tips;
PACKING
Consider packing a carry on. For this past trip I flew SATA Azores Air, and when I searched online for reviews, the biggest complaint was lost luggage. In an attempt to avoid this, I decided to challenge myself to pack everything in my rolling carry on suitcase for my ten day trip to a place with potentially varying temperatures. The challenges were many between deciding what I would really wear and what would be brought with me and never made use of, to making sure there was some kind of room for some souvenirs.
Ultimately when I checked in for my flight they weighed my carry on and found it to be slightly heavier than allowed. I was forced to check my bag after all. I was concerned about losing the luggage, but I had no choice but to leave it to the Travel Gods. Many airlines really hit you with baggage fees, and SATA is one of them. Checked bags were not included in the ticket cost. However, because my bag was carry-on sized, I wasn’t charged, so that was a very nice perk!
Another benefit to carry on sized luggage is that it’s simply less lugging when you get to your destination. Even if your walking one block from your Uber to the AirBnB, a block-long walk suddenly seems real far when you’re lugging standard-sized luggage!
Years ago when we went to Paris, our AirBnB was on the fifth floor with no elevator. I experienced painful back spasms the next day from dragging my behemoth of a suitcase up those stairs. I never forgot that, and I learned to ask about elevators. Years later in Croatia, we were (appropriately) chastised by locals because we were dragging our heavy wheeled luggage over their ancient cobblestones. Our luggage was just too heavy to lift.
So there’s another reason to pack light – show some respect to the ancient cities you visit!
Pack a change of clothes. Thankfully, my luggage was never lost, but while prepping for the trip, I was aware that the weight of my bag could force me to check it. I thought to myself What gives me anxiety about this? Answer; The idea that I would have no clothes for days. What’s the solution? Answer; Have at least one change of clothes with me in my personal item (in my case, a backpack). I have one oddly shaped compression packing cube. Maybe 3×10 inches? I used that to pack capri pants, a t shirt, a pair of underwear and some socks. They fit tightly into the bottom of my backpack and the stress of potentially losing my clothes was greatly reduced. I also packed toothpaste and my travel toothbrush into my backpack. If you get stuck in the airport for a really long time without your luggage (because your carry on was a bit too heavy and it had to be checked anyway!), you’ll be glad to be able to brush your teeth.
Lots of people say “You can just buy clothes or toiletries if you need to when you get there!” and that’s certainly true, but I just don’t want to buy more stuff. I don’t even like buying travel sized products because it feels wasteful (I’ll get to that later).
Use compression packing cubes; I’ve been using packing cubes for a little while but these are even better. They are packing cubes that have a second zipper which allows you to compress down your items to take up even less space. And they really work! When I used them I opted to not roll my clothes, but rather fold them to fit the length and width of the size of the rectangular packing cube. It worked great and all my clothes fit into two cubes which took up only half of my carry on sized roller bag. Here are the ones I bought
Use a laundry bag that takes up less space. If you launder delicates at home, you may use a delicates washing bag. It’s a very lightweight, zippered, mesh bag that works perfectly as a laundry bag when you travel and it takes up less room than travel laundry bags which i have found to be made of heavier nylon material. Sure, if your clothes stink, you really don’t want the mesh bag with your stuff, but there’s a work-around which I’ll also get to later.
Toiletries With exception to toothpaste, I don’t buy any toiletries in travel size. Over the years I’ve paid attention to bottles that come along in everyday use, and save them for travel. I have a prescription spray eye wash that comes in a very small bottle, for example. When it’s contents were used up, I saved it and use it for hair heat protectant when I travel. It could also be used for hairspray, facial mist, etc.
These little travel containers are awesome. They can actually fit quite a lot of product and for this last trip they worked great for my facial moisturizer and hair frizz ease. A bonus was that I got to play with my label maker!
I also have small soap dish-type containers similar to these. I had an old bar of Cetaphil soap which is great for body and face, so I cut in in half to fit in one of those containers (I felt very brilliant when this occurred to me “Wait a minute! I’m not going to need a whole bar for only ten days!”) I used another one to put a small bar of hair conditioner soap into. One less bottle of liquid to worry about spilling all over, and you can toss those in crevices when you pack because they don’t need to be viewable by TSA since they’re not liquid.
Medications I think pill organizers can take up a lot of room, and while I often reinforce them shut with a rubber band, I still worry they’ll pop open and spill all over. I take about four medications in the morning in pill form. All the pills thankfully look different. So, I count out what I need for a trip plus three extra days’ worth, and put them all together in a tiny ziplock plastic bag. Then I write the name, dosage (40mg, 10mg, etc), and a drawing of the shape of each pill on a small piece of paper and put it in the bag with the pills. It takes up no space whatsoever and the only challenge is actually remembering to take my meds (because you can’t check the daily container to confirm).
If you’re a Did I take my meds earlier? kind of person, this technique may not be for you.
PLANNING
Pay attention to flights of stairs; In Europe at least, the first floor is actually what we in the US would refer to as the second floor. So be aware of that when you book an AirBnB. Or make sure they have a lift/elevator if you think you’ll need it.
Clothes Washers. With a smaller suitcase you have less clothes. When I booked our places during this trip, I made sure the first one had a clothes washer. I didn’t need a closed-up laundry bag as a result because I could do a load of laundry before all my clothes got packed up together with my potentially stinky laundry. When we didn’t have a washer, I would hand wash when needed in the sink and hang-dry. I used little travel laundry soap sheets to wash them, but if you don’t have sensitive skin, you could just use hand soap right?
Tag Locations You can tag or “heart” locations on Google maps. Before my trip I did some searches for restaurants in Porto that had good ratings and I saved them in the map. When you’re wandering an unfamiliar city and suddenly find yourself hangry, you’ll be able to find a place to eat without searching like crazy in the moment. For this past trip this admittedly only sort of worked. One pastry shop was a full street over from where the google map claimed it was, and we unfortunately had bad luck with the local dishes anyway (we felt very guilty for not enjoying the local cuisine) so searching for places with well-rated food didn’t seem to matter.
International Phone Plan Invest in an international phone plan for the days you’re out of the country. You won’t regret it. Being able to check train schedules online or buy timed entry tickets from your phone is very handy, not to mention the most important part – being able to track down sources for ice cream! And yes, sure, being able to use your cell in emergencies is also important.
Shut off cellular roaming When I left cellular roaming on while overseas, my battery drained very quickly. To combat this, I would shut off cellular roaming whenever possible. I would turn it back on if I needed to search for something and couldn’t get on wifi. If I needed to navigate to a location, I would set up the navigation then shut off the cell roaming. I could still see where I was on the map even though roaming was off.
Check about entry into places. Many museums and attractions have timed entry, something Rachel and I learned the hard way during this last trip when we got to Palacio da Pena in Sintra at 11am to find that we wouldn’t be able to actually get in until at least 2PM.
You’d think this would have occured to me since years ago when I was solo in Barcelona, I walked for about 40 minutes uphill to Park Guell to discover that there were no more tickets available for the day, and the tickets were timed entry! Leaving the country the next morning at 11am, I was determined to see that park and bought entry for 8am the next morning. So check your places!
Travel in the off season. I’m not kidding. The post-pandemic crowds were truly insane.
Happy travels!
PS. TSA and medical devices – If you have medical devices like I do (transmitter and sensor for a Continuous Glucose Monitor) you know that those devices can be rendered useless if put through the x-ray machine or body scanner.
I put them in a ziplock bag to hand over to TSA to check by hand. I also take off my insulin pump and put it in with the other devices for review. The metal detector does not hurt my pump, but the pump will set off the metal detector and I’ll end up having to get a full body pat down. This time around I also wrote a note on the bag in Portuguese which explained these are medical devices that cannot go through the x-ray or body scanner. (Never assume everyone speaks YOUR language!)
On my last flight out of Portugal, the TSA attendant insisted that their machines wouldn’t hurt my devices, and he also told me to keep my pump on my body, “They’ll only need to check the device on the other side” he told me. meaning they would tap my pump with a special wand and test the wand for explosives.
I was right to be skeptical of his statement as I got a full body pat down anyway after setting off the metal detector with the pump. It really pissed me off.
As for the devices he put through the x-ray against my – and the device manufacturer’s – advice, had I been on my way to my vacation, I would raised holy hell about him putting it through the machine. But since I was headed home, I was less concerned about it.
Since I don’t need to use them for at least a few more weeks, time will tell if the ziplock bagged devices he put through x-ray machine were effected or not.
BEAN'S BABBLETORIUM 