…Where 'La Gourmandise' is not a sin!

We returned from a trip to visit the family in Canada last Friday and we learned an humbling lesson in traveling light. We used to carry a huge amount of stuff, most of it we never used, and in recent years decreased the amount of luggage we travel with dramatically, especially for Normita. Now with long delays in airports and major weight restrictions during peak seasons we are even more conscious about what we bring with us. Being stuck in Montreal at the airport most of the day last Thursday and needing to spend the night at a nearby hotel has us rethinking our traveling style even more.

For the first time since we met, Normita’s suitcase was even lighter than mine when we left, and due to some shopping even when we returned. This time we had packed only the essentials and brought with us only small format containers of things we really needed, like some cosmetics and creams for Normita and some vitamins for me. The rest like shampoo or mouthwash we bought when we arrived, and left there when we returned. We only brought a few changes of clothes and washed them a few times while we were there, thus reducing what we had in our suitcases.

My main problem is that I always need to bring my laptop with accessories, and since it died on me during this trip, I plan to buy the smallest one I can find for the next trip so I do not have to carry a huge clunker again next time. Since it was getting old I also needed to carry an external hard drive for extra storage and a bunch of adaptor cards for connection to the drive, modem, wireless networking, etc. Luckily a new machine will have all of that built-in with enough space on the hard drive for all of my stuff. This will make things much more compact, and also less painful to carry around the airport.

The next step will be to get lighter suitcase, as our old ones have been around the world a few times, and are showing it, and they are very heavy even empty. I’ll research what is available now and let you know what we find that is light, solid, and affordable. I brought back a nice leather computer case for the laptop that I had in storage in Canada, and found out yesterday, when I emptied it, that it was very heavy for its size, so I might shop around for something lighter too while we are at it.

After having to carry heavy suitcases for two days in the airport and hotels we made a New Year resolution of traveling extra light in the future.

Lucito

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