6 Things This 40-Something Travel Writer Always Packs on Vacation

With a few extras thrown in for good measure.

Anyone who claims to know precisely what and how you should pack for travel is full of it, trying to sell you something, or both.

I came home late last night from a long-planned and fortuitously-timed week across the country visiting family—a week in which what I wore, applied to myself, and left behind was about as predictable as anything can be in this currently-more-Kafkaesque-than-I-would-prefer world—and 25 percent of the things I’m now unpacking went utterly untouched. Untouched! So why, even though I’m a professional travel writer, should you listen to me? 

Well, I am not especially interested in packing cubes, smart luggage that can juice my devices and send me love notes when we’re apart, or antimicrobial basics I can wear every day for a month before finding a laundromat or an exorcist. I do, however, care very much about being comfortable, spontaneous, and fabulous. And now, I’m unpacking the things that I used or wore over and over, and am perpetually thrilled to have with me. They are, in no particular order (with no affiliate links, just pure editorial opinion):

Comfortable Yet Uncompromising White Sneakers

The first time I saw a bunch of gamine European influencers in little black cocktail dresses and normcore tennis shoes I assumed I was reeling from the combined effects of altitude, replacing most of my blood with Champagne, and the full marching band clattering through an instrumental version of “Maniac” from Flashdance like 10 feet behind me. (We were guests at the grand opening of a new Club Med ski resort in the French Alps.) Mais non: That was the beginning of sensible shoes going well and truly everywhere—and we all know how that’s unfolded over the last decade. This has been fine by me, as I have never really liked the look of heels and need footwear that won’t hobble me after a mile or several, but I’m still a snob. If you see me in a pair of ugly trainers, it’s because someone put them on my corpse. 

Fast forward to last November in Paris, when I packed a cherished pair of secondhand-via-eBay Comme des Garçons Chuck Taylors for a rainy week of wandering around museums and haggling with booksellers on the Seine; I sprang a leak clear through one sole on the very first night of the trip and had no other shoes that would work for full days of walking.

Inspired by the spectacular Veja sneaker repair center I’d seen at Galeries Lafayette the previous afternoon, I found a retail store near our Airbnb in the Marais, ignored the internet reviews saying Vejas are wonderful but absolutely should not be worn right away if you find yourself needing comfortable shoes halfway through a European vacation when you’re going to be on your feet all the time (the specificity!), and splashed out on a pair of relatively plain white kicks that aren’t even leather.

I wore them for the rest of the week for everything from flea-market shopping to the opera, I didn’t get even a hint of a blister, and several people asked me for directions. They are worth every euro of their eye-watering price tag. 

Big-Ass Baggus

I collect books when I travel, lots of ‘em, heavy ones, and I’m an airport-scale edgelord to begin with. Along with the suitcase I check in, I use Baggu’s Travel Cloud Bag, which bursts out of its little pouch like the lifeboat it is and accommodates my rarities and rocks (I also collect rocks). The Cloud’s heavyweight nylon body and zip top are tough enough for a cargo hold if I’m forced to check it.

On the softer side of supplemental totes, the unstructured and miraculous Big Baggu is ideal for stocking up on coffee, groceries, and snacks, shopping sprees at the aforementioned Galeries Lafayette (which houses a bunch of magnificent resellers and functions as Grace Jones’s one-stop shop in Paris for 1000-piece Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, per her memoir—which was why I visited in the first place), and collecting dirty laundry. It holds up to 50 pounds of just about anything and is just the right size if you need to bring a 3’x5’ Turkish rug home from Cappadocia. I have at least one and usually two of them—Big Baggus, not Turkish rugs—folded up in my tote-purse (also Baggu, send help) at all times.

Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please Sleeveless Mock-Neck Top

Style is a kaleidoscope, my body and others’ refract trends in their own ways, the world is a vampire, sure. That said, this seemingly-humble-yet-high-concept-as-hell shirt might be a perfect article of clothing.

Issey Miyake marries tech and elegance in exquisite workwear for dancers, and his indefatigable micropleats fall as beautifully after six hours en route to Reykjavík as they do in the mirror at home as you cosplay Carmen Sandiego while auditioning outfits and packing. (Do this. When in doubt, dress like a jewel thief.) I wear it on travel days with Tilda Stardust leggings (covered with little mashups of Tilda Swinton’s and David Bowie’s faces), a wildly-oversized black sweater blazer, and black ballet flats; I wear it to outdoor dinners with a metallic, pleated midi and platform sandals; I wore it to my septuagenarian dad’s office to cowork (I asked him about his colleagues’ dress code, and he remembered my top from the day I arrived and said it would be just right).

The architectural funnel neck is flattering rather than throttling; the sleeveless cut frames arms without revealing their deepest secrets; the heat-pleated polyester is virtually impossible to wrinkle or soil, and if you manage to do so you can hand-wash it with hotel shampoo and hang it to dry in the shower overnight.

I bought my first version (in black) in the summer of 2020 when I needed to feel human and also that nothing was touching my body. I bought my second (in dark green) earlier this year when I realized I was reaching for the same top three times a week. Dad approves of it; random Manhattan teens compliment it. It might be a perfect article of clothing. 

A Silicone Bag of Bubbles  

Can it be a coincidence that Trader Joe’s reusable food storage bags—clutch and versatile as a general proposition—fit Lush’s bubble bath bars like they were designed for the job? It cannot, and my life has become immeasurably cozier since I started concluding my days abroad by crumbling a chunk of Blue Skies and Fluffy White Clouds (foams up luxuriously, turns your bath water azure, smells like patchouli, frankincense, and cinnamon) in the tub.

Congratulations on a day of strenuous exploration, body! Bonus: Taking a 10-minute bath 1-2 hours before bedtime increases circulation in your extremities and lowers your core body temperature. This can significantly shorten how long it takes for you to fall asleep, even if you just trucked all the way from New York to Delhi and are dealing with a 10-and-a-half-hour time difference (that last half hour is just mean-spirited); peer-reviewed travel science right there.

While we’re talking about jet lag and recovery, I’d like to thank my Mushroom People water bottle for helping me maintain physical and spiritual equilibrium through 36-hour trail-running relay races, countless red-eye flights, and weirdly underhydrated foreign cities (looking at you, Prague). 

A Bright Weekender 

Dagne Dover’s neoprene duffles are, I would argue, the casual-luggage analogs of Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please clothing. Their vivid, thick tech fabric stretches dutifully, bounces back from squashing, and resists any number of sketchy travel fluids (though you can hand-wash it if need be, and I have).

If I’m not packing a full suitcase for a long weekend or road trip, I switch into their extra-large Landon carryall, which has a legitimately comfortable shoulder strap and won’t bruise the shit out of your hip if, say, you sprint through a train station wearing it. I feel that all luggage should be green (colored, though if it’s ecologically responsible, all the better), and Dagne Dover has obliged me by selling this duffle in both mint and deep olive (the colors I bought for my husband and me, though I’m eyeing their seasonal matcha version for the next time I need to carry more than two bags of rocks).

It’s also turned out that, like my trusty Vejas, vegan bags are as attractive and useful as their leather counterparts; it’s deeply satisfying to have cruelty-free pieces that would have been my first choice either way.

Geraldine the Plastic Polar Bear 

So I have this little German bear that I found on the children’s floor of the art store I’d haunt when I was a magazine research chief and spent half of each month waiting for my coworkers to give me their articles. I bought her, and I call her Geraldine.

I just asked my husband how he would describe her size and heft. Like an avocado? A mango? “She’s like a particularly fat ginger root,” he mused. She has a knobby density, is what I’m saying, and I’ve brought her on every trip I’ve taken for the last decade. She’s a permission structure for touristy photos and a lump at the bottom of my evening bag reminding me not to take myself too seriously. Thank goodness there’s white vinyl beneath her paint, because she’s gotten unbelievably filthy after 10 years of international nightstand-hopping. I am perpetually thrilled to have her with me.

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