Traveling and vacationing.
Jul. 15th, 2014 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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evelynne's prompts are back! Yesterday's was Talk to me about the logistics of traveling and vacationing.
I really like traveling; I like to see new places. I'm one of those people who can really enjoy just looking at stuff -- it's mostly why I like hiking, too.
Logistically, I'm usually a light packer.anjelabug and I are usually able to fit all the stuff for both of us for a long weekend into a pilot case and just carry it on a plane; even for long trips like two weeks in France or three in New Zealand, one large suitcase has generally done it for us (though both of those trips involved laundering in the middle to be able to rewear things.) We also always try to stick a day's underwear & socks into our carry-ons in case of lost luggage.
My airplane carry-on is a nylon DefCon bag I've had for several years. It can hold a laptop (even a big one) if desired, but I still use it even when not packing one. These days, all I need to carry on is generally my Kindle, now that Delta lets you use those during takeoff and landing. Before, I always had both the Kindle and a "takeoff and landing book" for the annoying 15 minutes when the Kindle had to be stowed. If I do have a laptop, it's convenient to have a Linux partition since I can generally get on the WiFi for free if I'm not stuck in Windows.
The only trip I can recall where we packed like normal people instead of incredibly light was our trip to New York City last year. It was a "foodie vacation" -- we pretty much went to New York to eat for a long weekend. And unlike Seattle, which has exactly one jacket-required restaurant in the entire city, top New York restaurants have dress codes. The requirement to pack a suit and nice shoes (plus Anjela's shoes & dress clothes) vastly increased the required volume of stuff. Previously, the only times I'd packed a suit when traveling were for business trips where I was running off to give a presentation, and these were such short journeys that I didn't need to pack much else. I also have to pack a lot of stuff for DefCon, but that's not packing like a normal person -- that's a case full of weird electronics to play with. I always kind of wonder what the TSA thinks of looking at my bag ("Who needs three computers, a lockpick set, a magstripe writer, an RFID reader, and multiple cell phones in their suitcase?"), but I think on DefCon weekend I'm one of a thousand bags like that and they likely think nothing of it.
Once we get to a place, our vacations tend to involve a lot of walking. We like to see lots of things when we're in a new place, and while I don't mind driving in a new city/country, I don't really enjoy it either. Plus in major cities having a car is mostly an expensive inconvenience, especially cities like New York and Paris that have excellent public transportation.
evelynne's prompts are back! Yesterday's was Talk to me about the logistics of traveling and vacationing.I really like traveling; I like to see new places. I'm one of those people who can really enjoy just looking at stuff -- it's mostly why I like hiking, too.
Logistically, I'm usually a light packer.
anjelabug and I are usually able to fit all the stuff for both of us for a long weekend into a pilot case and just carry it on a plane; even for long trips like two weeks in France or three in New Zealand, one large suitcase has generally done it for us (though both of those trips involved laundering in the middle to be able to rewear things.) We also always try to stick a day's underwear & socks into our carry-ons in case of lost luggage.My airplane carry-on is a nylon DefCon bag I've had for several years. It can hold a laptop (even a big one) if desired, but I still use it even when not packing one. These days, all I need to carry on is generally my Kindle, now that Delta lets you use those during takeoff and landing. Before, I always had both the Kindle and a "takeoff and landing book" for the annoying 15 minutes when the Kindle had to be stowed. If I do have a laptop, it's convenient to have a Linux partition since I can generally get on the WiFi for free if I'm not stuck in Windows.
The only trip I can recall where we packed like normal people instead of incredibly light was our trip to New York City last year. It was a "foodie vacation" -- we pretty much went to New York to eat for a long weekend. And unlike Seattle, which has exactly one jacket-required restaurant in the entire city, top New York restaurants have dress codes. The requirement to pack a suit and nice shoes (plus Anjela's shoes & dress clothes) vastly increased the required volume of stuff. Previously, the only times I'd packed a suit when traveling were for business trips where I was running off to give a presentation, and these were such short journeys that I didn't need to pack much else. I also have to pack a lot of stuff for DefCon, but that's not packing like a normal person -- that's a case full of weird electronics to play with. I always kind of wonder what the TSA thinks of looking at my bag ("Who needs three computers, a lockpick set, a magstripe writer, an RFID reader, and multiple cell phones in their suitcase?"), but I think on DefCon weekend I'm one of a thousand bags like that and they likely think nothing of it.
Once we get to a place, our vacations tend to involve a lot of walking. We like to see lots of things when we're in a new place, and while I don't mind driving in a new city/country, I don't really enjoy it either. Plus in major cities having a car is mostly an expensive inconvenience, especially cities like New York and Paris that have excellent public transportation.
