Ever since I read The Accidental Tourist I've thought that a travel writer would be a good job for me. If Rick Steves wants to send me to some obscure Third World country, I'd be happy to sit on the plane and write ethereal observations in William Hurt's soothing voice. I would go to the places none of the other travel writers wanted to go to, like Afghanistan, Mount Everest and Youngstown.
I would offer my own advice for travelers, like "Strollers are not permitted on Mount Kilimanjaro" and " Feeding the penguins in Antarctica is not advised" and " Babies can't take malaria pills, you know."
Travel guides should spend less time telling us when bridges were built and how far above sea level places are, and more time advising on what we should take on our trip. Packing for a trip is a dicey proposition. You have to put yourself in the future, in a place that maybe you've never been, and using your imagination, picture yourself and your needs. Some of us get frustrated and just throw random clothes and health and beauty aids into a suitcase and hope for the best. Some people have become experts on packing light, wearing underpants inside out, and refusing to check bags even on a month-long trip. My mother-in-law has invented a schedule of pre-packing exercises that results in 100 percent no-regret trips. Somewhere in the middle is where most of us want to be.
So while I wait for Rick Steves' response to my offer, let me share with you some of my advice for packing for a trip. There's more to it than fancy folds and Ziplock bags, I don't care what Pinterest says.
Take your medicine. Take all the medicine. Even the salve for that rarely recurring eyelid infection. Also, take your sunglasses just in case the salve has expired. Because if that disgusting eyesore (literally) is ever going to come back, it's going to come back when you're 3,000 miles from your medicine cabinet. Croupy coughs, sinus infections, latent IBS, foot fungus, cold sores, blisters and ingrown toenails all come 'round the minute they see your carry-on come out of the closet.
Pack for the weather, not for the pictures. "I won't wear sleeveless until I have the upper arms for it," my friend Kathy said once, when we were on a trip to Arizona together on the weekend that God annexed Scottsdale as the overflow to Hell. I, too, didn't have the upper arms for sleeveless and there was no hope on the horizon, but I was grateful that I had kept some of my younger, Florida-era tank tops around for old times' sake. I had tossed them in my suitcase at the last minute. And I didn't hesitate to put those bad boys on. I figured if someone didn't like seeing my arm flab, they could look at someone else's vacation photos. I hear Angelina Jolie went to Africa last year.
Take a pashmina for the plane. Don't have a pashmina? I have 13 spares in my closet. Send me your address and I'll mail you one. When we lived outside New York, I bought 10 pashminas in Chinatown every time I went into the city, never knowing when it would be my last chance. Then I moved to Chinatown San Francisco. I could open up my own pashmina shop if I could get my hands on some waving cats and faded suitcases.
The reason for the plane pashmina is the wild swings in temperature from the time you leave your house at the start of your trip, to the car, the airport, the plane when you board (always hot, regardless of the season), the plane as you start to taxi (frigid, regardless of the season), another airport, stepping outside in a city that has potentially the opposite climate as where you left from, and on and on.
I've used my pashmina as a blanket, a burka, a shawl and a cape when it's cold, and then I easily convert it into tray-tablecloth when it gets hot and I'm having my pretzel-cookie tea time mid-flight.
Pack a run-around outfit. Before I was a seasoned traveler, I would pack with a calendar and I would put one outfit in my suitcase for each day of my trip. That sounded right. But a lot of things sound right when you're in the optimistic packing stage of a vacation. So for the day of an out-of-town wedding, I would pack my pink dress and beige heels., some jewelry and call it a day. If the wedding was at 7 p.m., that put me at lunch at the local ribs joint in one of two outfits: yesterday's sweat-stained clothes (because I didn't pack that sleeveless shirt, did I?) or my fancy outfit. And if you haven't shown up to a wedding with barbecue sauce on your cocktail dress, you haven't traveled with me.
Throw your passport in your purse. For one thing, you never know when you're going to get talked into taking a side trip to Canada. But mostly, I've always thought that the worst possible thing that could happen on a trip is to lose your driver's license. Stuck in some Midwest town for the amount of time it takes to get a replacement driver's license sent to you is never part of anyone's travel plans, no matter how laid-back you are. Side bonus? You're the chick who reaches into her purse and instead of pulling out Bed Bath and Beyond coupons and fun-sized Wine Away, you pull out an international travel pass. Because you're that lady.
Take a corkscrew. We are the proud owners of approximately eight corkscrews, purchased with that bottle of wine we wanted for the hotel room. One of these days, I'll take all eight of them and sprinkle them into my Clinique free-gift travel makeup bags so that each one has the power to open a bottle of chardonnay after a tough day of sightseeing.
Don't forget a power strip. Because hotels haven't gotten the memo that people have, oh, I don't know, electronic devices that they like to charge at the end of a day full of looking up GPS directions and texting our husbands where r u? That one plug that's built into the bedside lamp only works when the lamp is turned on. So while you sleep in the dark, your phone and iPad are not only not charging, they're churning away their remaining power trying to find the elusive hotel wi-fi, which is playing hide and seek on the 13th floor.