Minimalizing Pretty

unwittingraconteur — Tue, 3 Jan 2012 04:55:00 GMT

I’m trying to get most of this packing business out of the way at the beginning of the week. I’ve pared down considerably. (See above: The Cute Tiny Purse, capable of holding only identification, debit/ATM cards and a pair of sunglasses.)

The first time I went to Europe, I packed two dresses, two tops and a pair of jeans. One of my style-conscious classmates brought along a ginormous steamer trunk. Big enough to stow a couple of bodies. No kidding. That thing made it up more flights of hotel stairs than a Justin Bieber groupie. I was a little envious at the time, because said classmate — she had exquisite taste, by the way — wore a different outfit every day of our three-month journey. On the other hand, she would have been SOL had there been no bellhops to tip.

I am not your gal traveler insofar that I’m not fond of toting around a serious amount of “stuff” when I go on vacation. The thought of stowing things in the upper bin makes me cross on domestic flights because I know I’ll be vying for a limited amount of space that’s eaten up by folding strollers and diaper bags.

No, I’m a one-suitcase kinda gal. Preferably the size of a gym bag. For a couple of reasons:

A whole lotta luggage irritates reasonably sane traveling partners of the male persuasion, who tend to be austere minimalists.

— and —

Back strain is a terrible thing.

Panama leaves me slightly flummoxed because I’m going to be dealing with at least two distinct climates. One, around Boquette where the coffee plantations grow (sweet!), is cool, mountainous and damp, necessitating long sleeves, pants, closed-toed shoes and perhaps raingear. The others are sunny and warm — so I’ll also need to bring along dresses, shorts and beachwear. I filled half of a large suitcase before I got twitchy and tossed most of it back out again. Still. Way. Too. Much. Stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know …

First world girl problems.

The Fine Art of Procrastinating

unwittingraconteur — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:50:00 GMT

Lennox the Red Somali is upset that he won't be going with us.

Nine days until I leave for Panama!

As you can see from the photo above, I am nowhere near the point of packed for My Big Fantastic Central American Adventure. (Hey, it’s tough to track down all of those little travel-sized bottles, folks!) Bless my travel-savvy significant other, Steven, for getting this she-bang organized. He not only made all of the hotel reservations; he typed them into an Excel spreadsheet and emailed me a copy. Yes, really. It’s adorably engineer-ish of him — which, of course, he is. Given my (procrastinating) druthers, I would have simply booked the flight and played the whole hotel-finding bit by ear like I’ve always done before.

That would have been So. Very. Bad.

As it turns out, there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on in Panama in January that really draws out the tourists, like the Boquette Flower and Coffee Festival and the El Panama Jazz Festival, which are apparently big deals. Any halfway decent place of lodging (my definition: with a private bath) would have been booked. If we would have flown by the seat of our pants, we probably would have ended up in some dreadful hostel where we would have spent most of the day fretting about our belongings getting pilfered and wiping other travelers’ unmentionable body ick out of the sink.

So this will be my first official “organized” vacation since I did the senior-year-abroad in high school. I actually have places to be and things to see. Coffee, chocolate, flowers, water sports, and hopefully a lot of really good seafood will be involved. But I’m not going to give you my itinerary; that’ll be my surprise to you — my friends back home.

A few words about those weensy travel-sized toiletries: I don’t know why I bother. The goal is to use everything up by the end of the vacation, making the luggage a tad bit lighter. But I always end up running out of shampoo/toothpaste/antiperspirant halfway through the trip, at which point I end up purchasing a full size from a local drugstore and toting them home anyway.

Panamania

Minimalizing Pretty

The Fine Art of Procrastinating