As we make plans to set off on a trip with a mildly complicated itinerary later today, we looked back on what we wrote in 2009, Packing It in. We've written several posts about packing since then (our favorite documents the time we packed two separate rollaboards for back-to-back trips to Quebec City and Hong Kong and managed to take the wrong one to Quebec City), but our modus operandi remains the same as it was in 2009.
We maintain a check list of travel requirements that we review before every trip.
We review the weather forecast at our destinations and pack accordingly.
We cross our fingers that we haven't forgotten anything.
Our journey starts this afternoon with flights from Bellingham to Seattle to Houston (Alaska upgraded us to First last night on both flights - Yay!). Tomorrow we attend a nephew's wedding and reception in Houston.
After a couple of days in Houston, we fly to Dallas to catch a flight to Frankfurt that we managed to upgrade using the awards provided to Alaska's 100,000-mile (100K) flyers. Those have been very difficult to use, and we're not all that disappointed they're going away.
After an overnight stay in Frankfurt at the Airport Hilton, we'll meet up with Tom, Ellyn, and Greg, Kathy's two brothers and one of her sisters-in-law, and fly together on Lufthansa to Porto, Portugal. There we board a CroisiEurope five-night cruise on the Duro River.
After the cruise, we plan to spend a couple of nights in Evora, a small city recommended to us. We'll then go by train to Lisbon, where we board Oceania's Marina, a ship we know well, for our umpteenth transatlantic cruise, this one to Miami, with stops in Madeira, Antigua, and Puerto Rico before we dock in Miami Thanksgiving Day and fly home.
Our challenge is to board Marina in clean clothes, ready to make use of their free laundromats. We remind ourselves that we'll be lifting those rollaboards into overhead compartments on planes and carrying them on and off trains.
"Dress to travel" is still the way to go for us.
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