Top 20 Travel Essentials
Hello and welcome to this post covering my top tips and tricks essential for traveling! Chris and I loved to travel before we moved to Ireland, but now that the rest of Europe is on our doorstep, we have found ourselves on a plane nearly every month. With all of the traveling we have done, we have discovered what products and procedures make traveling easiest for us and I wanted to share them with all of you! In no particular order, here are my Top 20 Travel Essentials. I hope you are able to take away a few nuggets to help make your next trip a travel breeze!
*Disclaimer: I am not sponsored by any of these companies -- I just like their products!*
1. FLIGHTS
Booking flights is one of the most exciting parts of travel planning, but it also can be stressful since it is a big bulk of the cost for getting to where you want to go. Lucky for us, we live so close to a lot of the places we visit, but no matter where you are going, there is an art to finding the right flight for the right price. Here are a few of my tricks:
- Use Google Flights or Skyscanner to browse for flights. Each site will list all the flight options out there and makes it easy to play around with filters [time of day you want to leave/land, amount of stops, airline preferences, etc.] and different dates.
- Be patient and check prices on different days, but book sooner than later to avoid price increases.
- Don't hesitate to book budget airlines. You essentially pay for a seat to get from point A to point B and that's it. It's easy enough to bring your own food and drink on the flight.
2. LUGGAGE
Having good luggage is key to reducing stress when traveling, in my humble opinion. Before Chris and I moved to Ireland, we both bought massive suitcases with matching cabin luggage. Those were great for moving our lives across the Atlantic, but are the exact opposite of what we need for actual holidays. Chris and I were used to checking our luggage in the States because we had perks with Delta. Over here, you have to pay to check your luggage, so we quickly got sick of paying that fee and waiting for our bags after landing. This meant it was time to invest in some new suitcases.
American cabin luggage is much bigger than European cabin luggage, so the best thing we did was order new suitcases that met Ryanair's measurement requirements. Of all the airlines, Ryanair requires the smallest space, so we wanted luggage we could take into the cabin with us no matter what airline we flew.
Samsonite is our favorite brand. It's a little pricier, but the quality is fantastic. What's great about Samsonsite is you can filter your options by airlines to make sure you're getting the right measurements. Our little suitcases have tons of space, expanders, four wheels, hard shells, and locks. I can't imagine ever using anything else. They have been perfect for all of our trips. There's no overpacking with these!
3. PACKING CHECKED LUGGAGE
If you are taking a longer trip or have certain items that call for checking your luggage, there are several items you should avoid packing in your checked suitcase at all costs. A lot of the following items come from a personal story or are horror stories from people we know. This list is not exhaustive and if you have anything else to add, I'd love to read them in the comments below!
Do NOT put these items in your checked luggage:
- Laptop / laptop charger
- Medication
- Phone / tablet charger
- House / car keys
- Makeup
- Jewelry / Valuables
- Passport / Copies of passports / Other essential travel documents
- All of your clothes -- keep an extra outfit in your carry-on just in case
4. PACKING VERSATILE LOOKS
No matter if you're checking luggage or traveling light with cabin luggage, life gets so much easier if you don't over pack. It has taken me years to figure this out, but using our new Samsonite cabin luggage has forced me to trim down my clothes, which made packing less stressful. I like to pack staples and pieces I can mix and match throughout my trip. A lot of times this includes one pair of black jeans, a couple different tops, my white Adidas kicks, and my black leather jacket. You can mix in a scarf to change things up. Packing light also leaves some extra space in your luggage in case you buy some great new pieces on your trip!
5. ELECTRONIC BOARDING PASSES
Paper copies of anything is becoming a thing of the past, so it's no wonder that airline boarding passes have moved to the digitial side of things. It's super easy to check-in online and add your boarding pass to your Apple wallet. What I love about having my boarding pass right on my phone is skipping the whole check-in process at the airport. When we arrive, we head straight for security to get to our gate. Plus, it's one less thing to carry and you don't have to worry about where you put it.
6. BE SECURITY READY
One of the most frustrating parts of navigating the airport is the security line. Am I the only one who wants to scream and yell when the people in front of me have liquids over 3 oz / 100 mL or walk through the metal detecter with a belt on? My best piece of advice is to arrive to the airport with your liquids already in the airport-approved sized bag [it's much smaller in Europe] and have the bag either at the top of your luggage, or in your backpack / handbag, so that you can quickly and easily pull it out and put it back in when you're going through security. Also, start stripping ahead of time so you're ready to go once it's your turn. These are easy steps to be prepared and help move the line along faster.
7. NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES
If you're like me and can get a bit of anxiety when maneuvering the chaos of a busy airport or train station, then you would probably benefit from some noise cancelling headphones to drown out the crying baby or chatty Kathy sitting two rows back. Chris and I both invested in a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones. They are big and cozy, fit all the way around your ear, have great sound, and mutes all the other sounds around you. Sometimes I don't even listen to music on the plane, I just put these on to quiet my surroundings and drift off into my own world. Expensive, but worth the money. [these are also great for work!]
8. iPAD / OTHER TABLET
I was never the biggest fan of the iPad until we started traveling a ton. For longer flights especially, they come in handy if you don't want to / can't sleep and need something to do. Chris and I often play games or will download Netflix episodes and watch those. If you don't want to lug around books while traveling, you can download a few and read them on the plane. It's the perfect gadget to keep yourself entertained, especially if your plane doesn't have built-in screens.
9. ACCOMMODATIONS
Besides flights, accommodations can be the most expensive part of traveling. I have done it all, from staying with friends to Airbnbs to luxury hotels. And while it's nice to have a luxury hotel room with a concierge, unless it's a special occasion, or the place you're visiting requires such [i.e. Thailand], it's just not a necessary expense. I still have standards, but I have started to let go a bit. As long as I'm in a decent location near public transportation, the room is clean, and there is a bed and bath, I'm good to go.
The sites I like to peruse for accommodations are Airbnb, VRBO, and Hotwire. Most of the time, I check Airbnb first to see what kind of properties are available for our travel dates. If nothing tickles my fancy there, I head to Hotwire to see what kind of "hot rate" I can get for a 4-5 star hotel.
My best suggestion is to check all three of the sites. Chris and I recently booked a rental using VRBO. The property was listed on Airbnb for $600+ for two nights, but then Chris found the exact same property on VRBO and it was just over $400 for two nights. The property had no reviews yet on VRBO, so it didn't have the reputation it did on Airbnb. Just by double checking, we saved over $200. That's crazy.
Further, some cities are just expensive. For example, London. When Chris and I visited there earlier this year, we had a dump of a hostel in the Victoria neighborhood that cost us nearly as much as it cost us to stay in a DoubleTree in Westminster. We got the DoubleTree deal through Hotwire's "hot rates" and it was 10x nicer for little difference in cost.
Bottom line: be open to different accommodation properties and make sure to check a few different sites to get the best deal.
Airbnb in Copenhagen
10. INVEST IN A NICE CAMERA
Cell phones these days have incredible cameras and you could totally get by using your phone as a camera. What a nice camera gives you is a wider framed shot, adjusts to different lights, and produces a higher quality photo. Plus, you don't have to worry about taking up a bunch of space on your phone for photo storage. We don't use our nice camera on the daily, but we love to bring it on our trips to capture wherever we are as best we can.
You don't have to spend a ton of money to get the fanciest camera. Depending on what you want to use it for, there are more basic models out there. I knew we weren't going to use any extra fancy gear or use ours professionally, so I did some research online and talked to a photographer friend to make sure we were getting a camera that was appropriately priced for how we were going to use it.
We settled on the Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera that you can buy on Amazon. It runs about $600 and has been perfect for us.
11. SELFIE STICK
As obnoxious as selfie sticks can look, they are perfect for capturing a picture with your travel companion(s) with the scenery in the background. It can be hard to trust a stranger on the street to take the picture you want, whether it's the framing, taking mulitples, trying different angles, etc. Having a selfie stick removes that unknown and allows you to get the photo the way you want it.
Chris and I found ours at a market here in Dublin and there's no brand name on it, but my suggestion is to find one that can plug into any phone, so others can use it if you're traveling in a group, or one of your phones dies... whatever it is. Ours has lasted us over two years now and we don't leave the house without it.
12. ADAPTERS
Before travelling to a new country, make sure to find out what style of outlets it has and order a few adapters ahead of time. I have found a lot of luck ordering them from Amazon. I suggest getting them ahead of time because they are overpriced at the aiport and you could end up in a rat race when you land trying to find them around town. So why not take out the stress and prepare ahead of time? Also, be conscious that not all countries use the same amount of wattage / voltage as where you're living. For example, if you tried using an American hair dryer in Europe, even with an adapter, you're going to fry the hair dryer. Be sure to do your research on the power as well, so that you don't ruin any of your own products and can save a little space in your suitcase by not packing things you won't be able to use anyway.
13. USB WALL CHARGER
On the topic of plugging things in... one of Chris' and my favorite items is a wall charger with four USB ports. We use this charger at home and take it everywhere we travel. We can charge our phones and both of our Apple watches at the same time. Or, swap out the Apple watches and charge our camera and our iPad. The charger also came with adapters for the United States, UK/Ireland, and the two-prong that the rest of Europe uses. So it comes ready to use in other countries. Highly, highly recommend this and it's less than $20.
14. POWER BANKS
Chris and I are both living in the dark ages with our iPhone 6S phones and so our battery drains faster than a German chugging a beer at Okoterfest. No matter if you're working with an older phone or not, with the amount of time we use our phones, it's hard to make it through the day on one charge. We especially use a lot of battery whilst traveling -- electronic boarding passes, scrolling through Instagram while waiting for a plane or train, using Maps to get around a new city, Apple paying, taking selfies, etc, etc. So it's necessary to keep our phones juiced up, which is why we don't travel without our power banks. This is something most of you probably already do, but if you don't, what are you waiting for?! There are lots of options out there. Chris and I got cheap ones for about $8.50 each and we get a full charge out of each one.
Here is an article by Tech Radar listing the best power banks of 2018.
15. REUSABLE WATER BOTTLE
An important lesson when traveling is to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. We lug a water bottle around with us everywhere we go. An easy way to save a little money and help the environment is to either bring a reusable water bottle, or buy one big one and keep refilling it while traveling. We refill at restaurants or at the airport, wherever we can. It helps keep us going and reduces swelling and bloating while traveling.
16. DRY SHAMPOO
Ok ladies and gents, we all know that we shouldn't be washing our hair every day, right? We should be washing it twice per week tops. Some of you may baulk at this, but it is so much healthier for your hair not to wash it every day and let the natural oils do their thing. Plus, styling it is so much easier when it's dirty. I have a lot of hair, but it's really fine and gets greasy by the end of the day, so I get by with using dry shampoo. It is probably one of my top five favorite things on this planet. When I travel, not washing my hair allows me to get ready faster in the morning and saves on having to pack travel shampoo and conditioner. There are tons of dry shampoos out there. My favorite is Moroccan Oil's dry shampoo for dark tones, but their travel sizes are pretty spendy. For a cheaper alternative, I use Batiste, which comes in a few different tones and smells and works great!
17. POCKET TRAVEL BOOKS
Most of the time Chris and I do travel research on our destination online ahead of time, but recently, we have been buying pocket travel books to bring with us on our trips. What I enjoy about them most is that they usually give a little bit of history or information for the sightseeing attractions, and they give food and restaurant recommendations. The travel books typically have sections about the different neighborhoods in a city and will list the restaurants to try in each area. This makes our long sightseeing days so much easier. Oftentimes when exploring a new area, you are touring and sightseeing, then when it comes time to eat, you don't know where to go, so you end up walking around looking for a good place and that can take forever. This can lead to getting hangry, which is a travel no-no. Having the pocket travel book solves that problem by offering several food choices right in your area, which makes finding the right place that much easier.
18. JOURNAL
Besides having amazing pictures from a trip, one of the most valuable things I do is keep a journal to write down all of the details from our trips. I use it to memorialize a complete itinerary of each day and to write down funny anecdotes from the day or stories told to us from tour guides or taxi drivers. I use it mostly to help me blog about our experiences when we get home, but even without the blog, it is a way to keep the memories alive and remember details that photos can't tell.
19. CASH
No matter where we travel to, we try to pull out the local currency from an ATM or currency exchange right when we land because you never know when you will need cash. Not a lot of countries are as paperless as the States. Europe is definitely getting there, but cash is still widely used, so it's always a good idea to have some on hand. Also certain credit cards may not work everywhere you go. As a basic rule of travel, you should always notify your banks where and when you're traveling, but even then there can be issues. Recently, Chris and I were in Frankfurt and none of our cards were working at this particular restaurant. When Chris went to pull cash out of an ATM, our card still didn't work. We were panicked, had no cash, and ended up leaving the restaurant with an unpaid tab. We eventually found an ATM that worked and went back to pay our bill, but that was a super stressful afternoon. Had we just had some Euros, we could have avoided that whole mess to begin with.
20. CREDIT CARD WITH TRAVEL PERKS
Last, but not least, is my favorite travel tip: anyone who loves to travel should have a credit card that gives you travel benefits. We all spend money, so why not reap travel rewards for purchases we're already making, right? There are a lot of different options out there, so make sure to do a little research to see what card would best match your needs. For those in the States, The Points Guy has a great site that compares different cards to make it easy for you to decide which one fits your needs best.
Chris and I each have the Platinum SkyMiles card with Delta, which gets us each a free U.S. domestic flight each year and free checked luggage. Now that we're living in Ireland, we never use that card, so we did research and got a few recommendations from colleagues on a card that would give us travel benefits and landed on the Chase Sapphire Reserve. This particular card gives us an annual $300 travel credit, 3x points on travel purchases, exclusive access to travel deals, and most importantly, it has no international transaction fee on international purchases. We also get free access to airport lounges, which is a luxury I don't think I want to go without ever again -- free drinks, free food, cozy seating, outlets everywhere for charging, no hustle and bustle of the airport, etc. There are other benefits, but these are the main reasons we got the card in the first place. This is our go-to card because we can use it everywhere we go and reap all the benefits. In the last year, we were able to pay for our flights and accommodations for a trip to Vienna, car rental when Chris' brother visited, and our flights home to the States for Christmas all in points. Um yes please!
If you're someone who pays off your credit card every month and loves to travel, or wants to travel more, you may as well get some travel perks for purchases you already make. Who knows, you might be able to take that trip you've always dreamed of!
There you have it! My Top 20 Travel Essentials. I hope you are able to take away one of these tips to use on your next trip, and if you do, let me know about it! Also, if you have any other tips for traveling, share them in the comments because I'd love to hear them!
Until next time...
Cheers! xo,
