I really dislike articles/blogs with titles that include “Top xx mistakes!” or “Top xx travel tips!“. Who the fudge is ranking this stuff?? Apparently gets more clicks. Anyways, here we go!
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Travel Without Checked Luggage: If possible, do it! The experience is amazing.
- Usually cheaper.
- It’s faster. You can often skip the line to check your luggage, just waltz right over to security with your carry on.
- Want to try and catch an earlier flight? Well, you might have arrived early enough to make the next flight out, but your luggage is still scheduled for the original. You are likely not going to be put on that coveted earlier flight if you have checked baggage.
- Arrival, you don’t have to wait and collect your luggage before exiting the airport. It can easily save an hour at big airports.
- Get a Fanny Pack: But seriously, if you don’t have a purse, I recommend this. Going through customs, check in, and security you will constantly be fishing out your passport and tickets. These are awkward sized items, they don’t really fit in pockets or wallets. Super easy to lose track of them when they are difficult to access and/or stored in different locations. I’ve had enough tickets get knocked out of my coat pockets, or handed over the incorrect flight ticket that I had to change. A travel organizer might look dorky, but wow is it amazing. I keep my itinerary, passport, tickets, pens, a spare credit card, and my phone in it. Only leaves my body going through metal detectors, otherwise is with me 100% of the travel. Storing in you carry on is not the same, and I do not recommend.
- Use The Bathroom: Even if you don’t feel like you need to go, you might if you try. Much better than being stuck in turbulence with the seat belt sign on wishing you had. Or at the bus station before a 40 hour journey up the Australian Coast. Bus station bathrooms are generally gonna be better than the one on the bus. No one knows how to aim.
- Don’t Use a Roller Carry On: If you are not a child, elderly, trying to look “professional”, have something incredibly fragile inside, or disabled, just don’t do it. Roller carry on luggage is heaver and has less space than a backpack. Roller carry on luggage are the first type to not fit in overhead bins on smaller airplanes, it usually winds up checked. It does not fit as well, a bin that can take two hard shell rollers only can fit three soft shell backpacks. Being able to change shape to fit the contours of different overhead bin sizes is not something roller luggage does well. If two of my family members can hike the Appalachian trail, I think you can probably handle walking through an airport without a roller.
- Don’t Claim to Be Canadian if you are American: You look like an idiot. No one cares. You are not going to get treated any differently. No one is going to target you for robbery. No one blames you personally for anything the US Government has done.
- Tell your bank that you are traveling, so they hopefully won’t flag any credit card or debit card transactions and block you from paying for the dinner you just at a cute little cafe in in Bremen, Germany.