Isn’t this a silly idea for a post? Travel tips from the babiest newbiest travel baby you know! But first of all: if YOU TOO are a newbie traveler, who do you want tips from, huh? Someone who’s going to stress you out and make you feel stupid by saying “Oh you really CAN’T MISS [difficult/expensive/niche thing you have no intention of doing]!” and “Now, don’t just go to the TOURISTY areas…”—as if you aren’t a tourist; as if it is silly to want to see/do tourist things; as if YOU have already been there three times like THEY have, when they ABSOLUTELY DID see/do all the touristy things they’re now making you feel ridiculous for wanting to see/do? Or would you rather get tips from SWISTLE, who will tell you about the thing where you have to put your hotel key card into a little slot, and will warn you about the rice? That’s what I thought.
But secondly, these are not actually tips for you, they are tips for me. I learned pretty thoroughly from this trip that tips from other people can be overwhelming and unhelpful. You get FULLY CONTRADICTORY advice: “Now DON’T overpack—but make sure you bring [a dozen things you weren’t planning to pack, some of which are bulky].” You get advice you can’t tell if it applies to you or not, but it’s strongly stated and as if it applies to absolutely everyone, so you worry if you ignore the advice you’ll end up kicking yourself. You get advice about seeing and doing more things than you can possibly see/do, which can be overwhelming. People who have traveled extensively have largely forgotten the things that were surprising to them when they were new to traveling, so they don’t tell you about the key card and the rice. And/or, the reason they’ve traveled so much more than you have is that they’re not temperamentally like you in any way, and so they give you all the advice that applies only to people like them (COMFORTABLE WORLD TRAVELERS), and not to people like you.
So these are my tips TO MYSELF. I know I will THINK I will remember all these things without writing them down, but I will not. Maybe they will also be relevant to you, or maybe not.
Travel tips, to me!:
• Plan on wasting the first evening in any new place, because you will be having a little meltdown over everything being new and different, and you will need to play Candy Crush and eat cookies/candy and go to bed early. By the next day, you will be feeling happier and more at home.
• Get coffee more often than you think you need coffee: sometimes you are low on energy and goodwill, and a little caffeine and fluid is exactly what it takes to restore balance.
• Likewise, eat more often than you think you need to eat, even when you think you’re not hungry: frequently the problem is that you ARE hungry, but you don’t realize it because of overstimulation and jet lag.
• Bring benadryl and melatonin and take them every night even if you think you’ll sleep fine. Take 1.5 or 2 benadryl, not 1: don’t kid yourself.
• Take an extra shower if you have any inclination: as with eating and sleeping, adding some cleanliness can work wonders. Think of the Sims, and how their little floaty diamond can improve so much with a shower or a meal!
• Bring AMPLE dramamine, more than you think you can possibly use. Remember bus/train/subway rides as well as plane rides.
• Bring a second pair of shoes, for if/when the first pair gets wet. It feels like it’s not worth the suitcase space, but wet feet are a misery.
• Bring a casual dress, or a pair of nicer pants and a blouse. It’s nice to have something A Little Nicer for when it turns out the restaurant is a little dressier than expected.
• Bring a nightlight for the bathroom.
• Make a “leaving the hotel room” final-check list; put “bathroom nightlight” and “passports” on it.
• Remember if you get Chinese takeout/delivery, it may not come with rice. Ask about the rice.
• Bring cash for tipping, and for buskers/panhandlers, and for pay-toilets, and for donation boxes at churches, and so forth.
• Make sure you’re using one of the credit cards that DOESN’T charge you a foreign-currency-exchange fee each time (Chase, TJX), not the one that DOES (L.L. Bean).
• Make reservations for dinner each night. It feels overwhelming to have to plan ahead like that in an unfamiliar place, but you know what’s more overwhelming? Walking around hungry in an unfamiliar place trying to find something to eat and every restaurant is saying no.
• Err on the side of buying the souvenirs: you are a person who is more likely to feel sorry you DIDN’T buy it than sorry you DID. Don’t wait for Just the Right Thing: if you find Just the Right Thing later, you can buy that TOO.
• Get extra cookies (or similar easy fun food) to bring to social events for the next month or so after returning home, and to share at work.
• Make sure there is some SHOPPING TIME, ideally browsing around by yourself, perhaps while everyone else does something vigorous.
• Make the effort to get postcards and postcard stamps and start sending postcards as early as possible: it turns out you LOVE that, and it adds a fun element to every tour stop (ooh, let’s get postcards! and who shall I send these too?), and it gives a fun evening-stroll option (finding a post box), and you don’t care afterward how much the postage cost. BRING ADDRESSES.
• It is a very good idea to spend some time each day in the hotel room playing on your phone, checking email, reading, writing postcards. It feels like you are WASTING YOUR PRECIOUS TRIP!!!! YOU COULD BE CRAMMING IN MORE TRIP THINGS!!! But it’s what makes it possible to recharge enough to enjoy the trip things, and to feel more at home in the room.
• Try to think of the money as play-money. It’s expensive to travel, it just IS. And it would feel very silly to come home from an already-expensive trip and to Not Have Done things on that trip because they cost money. Borrow Paul’s “This is what money is FOR” attitude, even if you cannot entirely make yourself believe it (because money is ALSO for college tuitions and home/car repairs and retirement).
• Bring a little notebook so you can jot down things you want to remember to tell people, things you need to look for in local shops, things you want to remember to do, notes to leave with tips for housekeeping, etc.
• Don’t bring an umbrella: buy one as a souvenir. Buy reusable bags from local stores.
• Go out to a bar in the evening, if the opportunity presents itself. It can be difficult to go out when you feel like settling in for the night, but you will be glad you did. (I wonder if this would reduce first-night woes, or if it would be Too Much? Something to try, maybe.)
• When given an option between something familiar (strawberry yogurt) and something unfamiliar (rhubarb yogurt), try the unfamiliar one. Don’t get mint-chip ice cream, get the clotted-cream-flavored one or the rum raisin. Try to try as many Things You’ve Heard Of (jam roly-poly, coronation chicken) as you can. It turns out you really like to do that, and find it exhilarating; also the food is revitalizing.
• Buy local snack food. It’s fun, and also it’s very good to have food on hand for moments when it turns out food is needed.
• Bring your hat. I know you hate hats, but you will be glad to have the hat.
• If things feel overwhelming, it’s a good idea to sit and admire the view for a little while.
• SPLIT THE GROUP. SPLIT IT. IT IS SO MUCH BETTER IF YOU SPLIT IT. YOU ARE A BETTER PARENT AND BETTER DECISION-MAKER WHEN YOU ARE NOT TRYING TO CO-PARENT ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE.
• Check to make sure the hotel has air conditioning.
• Check to see if there is by any chance a laundromat in any kind of reasonable reach, because it turns out you hate the feeling of stale grubby clothes more than almost anything else. Next time consider buying some quick-dry pants/shorts so you can do more sink laundry—or else budget $40 or whatever to send out two pairs of pants/shorts with the expensive hotel laundry service, because it seems inexcusably expensive but so’s everything, and you’ll get more personal happiness/wellbeing out of two pairs of clean pants/shorts than almost anything else you could spend that money on. Bring a thingie of detergent—the nice lavender-scented one was a good, soothing idea. (It was a sample-size bottle of Love Beauty and Planet lavender detergent, which I got in some sort of beauty box and was saving for a special occasion, and THIS WAS THE BEST SPECIAL OCCASION POSSIBLE.)
• Bring some disposable cutlery, or buy some there.
• Call and order carryout pizza when you’re 30 minutes from home. Pour a drink IMMEDIATELY upon arriving home, and eat the pizza, and leave the luggage/mail/cats/EVERYTHING for AFTER eating/drinking. Remind everyone else that it is common to have post-travel meltdowns upon arriving home, when there is so much to do (the pile of mail! the unpacking! chores!) and when the house looks so cluttered and grubby compared to the hotel rooms someone else was keeping clean for you.
• Don’t hugely add to your stress before the trip by killing yourself with housework—but you will thank yourself if you clean the bathroom before you leave (it’s more than fine if you clean it several days before and just touch it up the day of departure).
Lovely travel tips, and very relevant to this fairly experienced traveler still! I will add “go to the bathroom whenever possible” to your tips about coffee and eating. Just like when you have a toilet training kid, you should never miss a chance to go potty. Museums generally have clean, free ones. As far as laundry goes: I have a cardboard envelope of laundry detergent sheets that I use just for traveling; you can use two in a machine or tear one into pieces for hand washing.
OMG yes GO TO THE BATHROOM whenever there is an opportunity. Just before you leave the hotel! Every time you eat/drink something at a place with a bathroom, use it! At every museum/sightseeing locale that has a bathroom, use it! If you duck into a hotel not your own to look at it etc, use the lobby bathroom! America has a PLETHORA of free and available bathrooms and other countries just never seem to have as many.
Thirding this!
In France las year we frequently got caught in the cycle of: you have to be a customer to use the washroom, so you buy a drink, leading to needing to use the washroom again quickly, leading to the buying of more drinks, etc.
I will also add that sometimes (I have seen this in the Caribbean, mostly) that the keycard thing isn’t for all the power, but it IS for the air conditioning. So if your room’s lights are working but it’s too hot, look for the key card thing!
I travel a lot, mostly work and sometimes fun, and subscribe to the “pouches” theory of packing. I have a pouch for 3 oz. wet toiletries and one for dry ones, one for makeup, a pouch for cords/plugs, and packing cubes: one for socks/undies/pjs, one for tops, one for bottoms. this way I don’t have to toss through a whole suitcase to get a fresh sweater and a comb.
I am also a fan of the “pouches” method, at least for small and easily-misplaceable items. I think I might have to invest in some packing cubes for my next trip. I also recently got one of those fancy toiletry bags with multiple different compartments, and it was a travel game-changer. I’ve even started keeping my makeup in it when I’m not traveling.
YESSS to packing cubes. I’ve had the ebags ones for years and I love them.
I travel quite a bit, and I was still nodding along through this entire post.
One thing I’d add is that if you take any kind of over-the-counter medicine (daily or on an as-needed basis), make sure you can also get it over-the-counter in the country you’re traveling to. If not, bring some with you, even if you think you won’t need it. If it’s one you take daily, bring more than you think you’ll need.
Also, maybe this one is only helpful for me, but: have one dedicated place in your bags/luggage where you keep your passport. (Suitcase pocket, purse/backpack pocket, wallet, whatever.) Only take it out as needed, and put it back as soon as you’re done with it. Never put it anywhere else, even if you’re sure you’ll remember where you put it. (I have a tendency to forget where I put things – and I will *panic* if I misplace my passport even for a second.)
ALSO-also, I always bring one of those duffel bags that folds up super small. Worst case, I don’t end up needing it – but it has saved me many a time when I overdid it on souvenirs and ran out of luggage space.
This is so good, I always, always, always put the ID in the same place.
I have loved your series of trip posts! Thank you for the pizza-ordering tip — I whispered “genius” upon reading it.
That is an amazing tip. I have friends who schedule a grocery pickup for the day they’ll get back too, and then they can just stop by the store and have somebody else load the essentials into their car for them.
Yes – my sister orders her groceries on the way home. I have always thought this was genius!
I love this list. I LOVE THIS LIST SO MUCH. I am going to add, you can ship stuff home. I will repeat this: You Can Ship Stuff Home. (This is how I got a bunch of sea glass home one year when an earthquake had shaken them loose from the ocean floor and washed them up on the beach in such abundance that the water made chiming noises as the tide went in and out).
Use the cheapest and slowest shipping method available so it doesn’t beat you home.
I love your comment as bout the comfortable world traveler not understanding your temperament. I am really enjoying reading about your forays into international adventures. Here are some of my go-to travel practices that I use.
Roll outfits to save space and organize them by day. For kids, put each day’s outfit into a quart size baggy (shorts, tee, undies). If you go to the beach or your shampoo leaks, the clothes are fine. If you have to repack quickly, grab a bag for each kid and go. You can also toss a bag into your backpack easily and have a backup set of clothes that doesn’t take up much space.
A couple of sheets of origami paper can divert meltdowns and give kids something to do when you need them to sit quietly. Plus it takes up next to no space. I have used this in planes, taxis, train stations.
We couldn’t travel anywhere in the summer without wearable water bottles. If you search on the ‘zon for “water bottle with strap to carry for kids” you’ll get a lot of options. Some carry cases come with a zipped compartment so you can give them a little cash to carry. I am a better parent when I don’t have to carry multiple full water bottles. Plus, I can just remind them to take sips instead of having to hand them out 4000X’s a day.
I also love the wearable badge/small purse things. Add a card with your phone number and they can carry their own train passes. It is more efficient and fosters a sense of independence.
Love the wearables idea for kids. I wonder if I could get teens to buy into this.
Lots of great tips!
Here’s one for past me, a mother of multiple small to medium-sized children:
Negotiate the packing/unpacking duty division. A fair division is that, mainly, you pack for the trip and, mainly, your other half does the rest (unpacking at the destination, packing for the trip home, unpacking at home.) The packing for the trip is just much more difficult in just about every way.
The order pizza when 30 minutes away from home is genius! I really enjoyed reading this list.
I’ve had road-warrior jobs where I travel 4-5 times a month, and I definitely agree that these are good tips!
One thing to remember is that it’s not only just temperament that makes traveling easier for people who do it a lot. We get lots of practice and have all the supplies we need! Even now that I travel less, I have a separate fully-stocked toiletry bag ready at all times – I pop it in my suitcase and boom, that whole category of packing is done. I also own lots of very formality-flexible non-wrinkling clothes. And possibly most importantly, I’ve been to the same few places enough times that I know my favorite snack brands and chain restaurants, and already have a subway pass.
Yes to an always fully stocked toiletries bag, down to saving old bottles for prescription meds so I can keep a small (appropriately labelled) stash available. I figure it’s all products I use anyway so the cost of duplicates evens out over time!
Save one clean outfit to wear on your travel day home. If you have to pay $$$ to the hotel laundry service to get it, DO IT. You will feel so much better (physically AND mentally!) traveling in clean clothes!
Having a blog is just so handy for this sort of thing, isn’t it? I don’t know how many times I have gone back to mine for “when did that happen” or “was there something about that trip I wanted to change next time?”
The pizza idea is genius; we always have frozen pizzas ready for our return but it would be even nicer not to have to cook them. May I add two items to your list?
1. Get a cab or Uber from the airport to your hotel. “But there’s a train/subway/bus with a stop near the hotel!” No. Don’t do it. The stop is not as close as you think it will be, you have heavy luggage and are extremely tired and jetlagged and cranky and everything is in a foreign language and it is not worth the cost savings. Divorce is more expensive than a cab.
2. Write down what you do every day! In a little notebook or in your Notes app, jot down where you went and the things you saw and where you ate. You think you will remember but you definitely will not.
Seconding the advice to always take a cab from the airport. *Even if* there’s good public transit with a stop close to your hotel, there’s nothing worse than being on a crowded bus/train with a ton of luggage when you’re exhausted. Figure out the public transit situation once you’re well-rested and have a place to put your luggage.
“Divorce is more expensive than a cab.”
*snort*
I think I may have found a new mantra!
I love the idea of buying reusable bags as souvenirs. Allll the bags are needed when traveling, I like to bring a bunch of plastic grocery bags in my carry on, for garbage en route and and wet/dirty things later, and the kind of reusable bag that stuffs into its own pocket, for shopping, and the kind of reusable bag that unfolds and stands up, for laundry or the pool or the beach or whatever. Containment!
This is great. Although (as far as I know) it would not work when traveling outside the US, I have found Instacart, which I “discovered” at the start of the pandemic and of which I am now a faithful user, to be a useful addition to my traveling experiences both coming and going. Timing can be a bit tricky, but it is possible when arriving in an airbnb in a new location to have a grocery order show up shortly after arriving there myself, and also to have groceries delivered to my home just as I am returning (or shortly after I have returned) home. This doesn’t beat the pizza-ordering genius, but is a nice addition and makes it possible to have things like milk-for-tomorrow’s-breakfast without needing to go to the store.
I love these tips! Here are two more:
1) There are never enough hooks in hotel rooms/bathrooms. I always bring a plastic overdoor hook for this reason. Even if it won’t work on the door, it will usually hook *somewhere*.
2) Similarly, I bring a a handful of colorful plastic clothespins. In addition to dripping laundry, they are good for clipping to towels (to identify which of the identical white towels belongs to which family member), and also for keeping bags of chips or snacks closed. Some spare rubber bands are also useful for this purpose.
Oh that hook idea is a good one–I got some for my in-laws who go on a lot of cruises, they fold down flat for packing. I think I found them on Amazon.
And the clothespin idea is great too–chip clips or binder clips work too, they’re a good all-purpose tool for everything from closing up snacks to clipping the hotel curtains closed so you can sleep in!
These are great! Here are mine:
1. Yes to making a photocopy (not just a phone picture) of your passport face page. Phones get stolen/lost too, and knowing your passport number is a great help in getting a new passport.
2. Money/credit cards should be kept in three different places in your luggage (although not checked luggage!) in case of wallet/phone loss. I put one credit card in my wallet, one in my toiletries bag, one in the inside pocket of my backpack.
3. opinions may vary on this, but I think you should never check luggage. It is always a wait, you are just giving the airlines an opportunity to lose your things, and stuff can always be mailed to yourself (often for much cheaper than checking luggage). Aside from socks and underwear, you need less than you think. It’s ok to abandon things you don’t like much either.
I travel with just my partner and a teenager and yet, “split the group” was also good advice. We are not meant to be within feet of each other 24/7 in a strange place and a rotating break for dinner was a godsend for us.
I love sending postcards and if I’m traveling in the US I buy postcard stamps and bring them along and also print a sheet of address labels for my list of people who get postcards. I know some people might think this is a bit impersonal or something of the sort but there’s so little personal mail in our mailboxes these days I think people are just happy to get something and I have received zero complaints/comments on it.
It saves time when I’m writing them out, I do not have to hunt for addresses in my phone, it makes it much easier to keep track of who I already sent a postcard to because the label is gone, and honestly it motivates me to sit down and do the cards even if I’m feeling wilted at the end of the day because something about having labels on the sheet is very motivating to me in a “this task needs completion!” way.
Since I started doing this a few years ago I send them much more consistently and I noticed I started receiving more postcards, too.
address labels for postcards. brilliant. thank you
This is brilliant. We love to send and get postcards…this would make it so much easier
One tip I’d seen a ton and always ignored until my last family trip: bring a collapsible clothes hamper. I got one that is a flat disc when packed and just pops up as soon as you unsnap a little thingie on the side. SO GREAT to toss the whole family’s dirty sweaty clothes in one place every day (we tended to do this anyway, it was just.. like… a pile in the closet or hotel room corner). And then I just dumped all the dirty clothes into one suitcase for the trip back and anything clean, gifts/souvenirs, etc that I didn’t want mixed with dirty underwear went in the other suitcase.
The pizza upon arrival idea is SO smart. I need to add that to my mental list of post-travel helpful things!
We had a period in our lives where I set it as a rule that our first meal of any trip was Domino’s, ordered to the hotel room. This is because we had one too many trips where we arrived at a hotel juuuuust past the family’s usual dinner time. My husband would be complaining about the universe, there would be a cranky kid in the mix, and I would be at the stage of hunger where I Could Not Make Decisions. It was a terrible hour to have to find a nearby restaurant where everyone would eat something. Plus if we went out, we were guaranteed to not have food before kid bedtime, thus setting ourselves up for tired+cranky kid for Day 2.
And I wholly agree with getting the house to a reasonable state before you leave. When I was single, I would leave my apartments perfectly clean. With a family now, I generally just try to get it to the best that I can before we have to go. It’s never as clean and tidy as I want it to be, but even as much as I get to is better than nothing.
These are all excellent tips and can be applied not only to travel but also to other life situations where things are a little out of the ordinary. I know we are only talking about Swistle travel tips for Swistle travel and other people’s travel tips can be the opposite of helpful but this is my number one travel tip for myself and other people prone to anxiety and perfectionism: ACT LIKE YOU ARE GOING TO GO BACK (even if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell you’re actually going to go back). If I think this is the first, last and only time I’m going to be in a place I will spend the whole time fretting about how I need to do and see ALL THE THINGS and everything needs to be PERFECT and then I get overwhelmed and melt down. So instead I try to act like the trip is a reconnaissance mission. Oops did I miss that museum? I’ll put it on the list for next time! It also takes the pressure off me to spend that EXTREMELY NECESSARY laying around in the hotel room looking at my phone time.
This was a good read. I need to write this kind of thing to myself. A year ago I went back to England with my daughter, after not going back in 19 years. Next spring I might get to go with my son. I know I have some advice for myself about what I want to do and what I missed out on doing and what I should bring back and what I enjoyed bringing back. Funnily enough, I really enjoy my reusable M&S Percy Pig bag – I use it at ALDI and it makes me happy. I only bought it because my sister-in-law had bought one and so I took her idea and am so glad I did.
“Bring a second pair of shoes, for if/when the first pair gets wet. It feels like it’s not worth the suitcase space, but wet feet are a misery” Best tip ever: my sister and I went to Canada by ourselves when I was 14 and she was 19. She took one pair of shoes, even though Mom said to take another pair. Her one pair of shoes literally fell apart in the rain. I think she ended up patching them together somehow until she could buy a new expensive pair.
“It is a very good idea to spend some time each day in the hotel room playing on your phone, checking email, reading, writing postcards. It feels like you are WASTING YOUR PRECIOUS TRIP!!!! YOU COULD BE CRAMMING IN MORE TRIP THINGS!!! But it’s what makes it possible to recharge enough to enjoy the trip things, and to feel more at home in the room.” this to me is the best tip. I use to try to cram too much into a vacation/visit and would feel worn out. I now plan an occasional morning and/or afternoon off to just hang out. Works wonders
Proposal for first night – do go out to the local pub/bar the first night. It feels so celebratory, like “we made it! We’re here!” And then plan for a quiet first morning. For my “first morning,” I generally make time to visit the hotel gym (helps my anxiety), then get an ok coffee and sit on the hotel porch/lobby/people watching place and just rest. Maybe read a little bit, let the kids sleep in, maybe skim notes about the places we intend to go in the next few days. I always bring a little pot of foot scrub, and on the first morning I’ll soak and scrub my feet just to feel prepared for the walking that is to come, and/or do a sheet mask. Anyhow. Just a thought. Getting to a new place after lengthy travel leaves me so jangly, a night out gets those nerves out and then a relaxed morning gives me the chill start to the trip.
Second “tip” – bring AT LEAST one pair of shoes, if not two. (She says, side-eyeing her 13 year old who just somehow managed to go on a 2 week trip to Scotland and forgot his shoes, bringing only slippers for the plane.) (This is the second time this child has arrived after lengthy travel to a place far from home without shoes. The first time we drove, so I could sort of see it. But how he took an 8 hour plane ride without real shoes is a new one.) (*shoes in Europe are SO EXPENSIVE)
I’m so very sorry for how much I laughed at this (ruefully, sympathetically). I was on a five-hour road trip with my daughter and we were about five minutes out when she announced from her booster seat that she wasn’t wearing shoes. Also, one of our friends’ kids on a camping trip forgot to pack any t-shirts.
When we were kids (like, in single digits) and headed to the mountains across the border in the US for a multi-day hike, we pulled up to park after our 6-hour drive and my dad looked at my sister’s mocassin-slipper-clad feet and LOST IT while my sister declared indignantly that they were COMFORTABLE, and she wanted to hike in her MOST COMFORTABLE FOOTWEAR.
Also, my husband went on a beach resort vacation and did not pack a swimsuit.
My husband has something like 6 swimsuits from the years before I realized he never remembers to pack a swimsuit. I now put a note about his swimsuit on his toothbrush.
Re: Shoes and suitcase space- Don’t forget, you can put things IN the packed shoes, like toiletries, socks, etc. I do this and it makes me feel like I am not wasting too much space with my third or fourth pair of shoes!
I travel never, but I imagine as the 5 littles get older, that is something we would like to do. Swistle Travel Tips are exactly what I’ll be looking for! I have loved all these posts!
I love these tips. I am the type of person who prefers to be in my home with my stuff and not with other people, so travel is stressful and all of your advice is valuable. We recently flew with all 4 kids (ages 4 to 11) across the country for 10 days and the only thing that got me through the nightmare of stress that was packing for that trip was the mini-toiletry sections at my grocery store (miniature stuff is just more fun!) and my label maker. I had so much fun labeling everyone’s travel toothbrush and the clear mini bottles that we filled with shampoo, it made a very stressful activity into something I didn’t dread quite so much.
I relate to almost all of these, but none so much as the first. I have started telling everyone to be prepared for first-day trip depression and regret. My friend who went to Hawaii said it probably saved the first few days of her trip. The time I went to Jamaica for spring break I almost tried to go back to the airport and fly home the first night.
Also agree so much about ‘this is what money’s FOR’. My friend’s stingy-ass ex-husband would take the family out for dinner and make them share two meals between four of them. When they were children, you mean, I asked? No, she said, last month when they were teenagers.
I also loathe the ‘oh god, not the TOURISTY areas’ people. Then again, I think you and I ARE of similar temperament.
I always bring a nightlight for the bathroom, but I’ve left nightlights and charging cords behind because once they’re plugged into walls they seem like part of the room and not as much part of your stuff. So I’d suggest adding “charging cords and blocks” to your “leaving the hotel room” final-check list. I remember them now because I have a little case for the nightlight and a block-and-cord organizer, so I leave the case and organizer on the desk as a visual reminder that it shouldn’t be packed away until it’s holding the stuff that goes in it again.
I’ve also read the tip to use a little battery-operated dollar-store tealight as a nightlight that doesn’t have to be plugged in so when my current travel nightlight goes kaput that’s what I’m going to try next.
As a housekeeper, I can say that the main things left behind are a) things that plug into walls (chargers/nightlights etc) and b) things left in beds (pyjamas/cuddly toys (heartbreaking)/iPads under pillows)
We always shake out the sheets for this reason! I’ve found a few things that would have been left otherwise!
Your tips are great. The posters tips are also great. But, what I really want to know is …..where did you go, what did you see, what did you love, where would you go back to. You know, all the deets.
I’ve left Australia for the very first time and am in Japan, and I wanted to tell you I followed your suggestion about laundry detergent sheets. It’s been very helpful , so thank you! I didn’t know they existed before your post.
My first full day yesterday was very warm and I did almost 20k steps, far more than usual. I needed my usual morning shower and change, then one in the afternoon, then one in the evening as well. So being able to wash a couple outfits and underwear in the bath was great.
I’m in Korea for work right now, not a frequent traveler at all. I couldn’t get the lights to turn on and wandered around for a while and BAM it hit me about the key card thing, that you or a commenter had mentioned. I would have never known. Lights are on!
YES!!! THE SYSTEM WORKS!!!
I’m going to Ireland for the 5th time in a couple weeks but this list is still so helpful! I’m bookmarking it. You’re SO RIGHT about drinking MORE coffee, taking another shower! I often feel just so tired and run down on these trips, and have felt bad about it later. But traveling is exhausting and traveling WITH small children is off the charts exhausting, and not everyone can bounce right back (like Niall can), so I need to go easier on myself and drink more coffee. Also, I’m going to buy a BOAT LOAD of dramamine right now. Bee gets terribly carsick and we’ve finally settled on her being able to take the chewable dramamine tabs with minimal screeching. Your words are very soothing, Swistle.