How NOT to Pack.

One of my first big traveling trips ever was a month and a half trip to Europe (for a few weeks) and then to Vancouver where we took a cruise through Alaska, and then stayed on our own. We were going to Croatia, London, Rome, and a few other places and I had to look FAB.

I'm all excited shopping, planning outfits, the whole nine. I took pics of each of my cute outfits so I knew what went with what. I may or may not have labeled which beach party outfit and what night outfit was going to be worn and where. I had this down. I brought wedges for day parties, heels for clubs, cute sandals for exploring the cities, and accessories, of course. I was so pumped!

My boyfriend and I bought new suitcases - one very large one and 2 small luggage's. This was gonna be perfect, I was all set. Once I started to pack I noticed things were getting a bit tight, but not too bad (I justified in my head that it was fine). I even knew that when we got to Vancouver, we were planning to buy all hiking gear (hiking boots, wind breaker, hiking pants, under shirts etc.) for Alaska. I took some things out, not much, but some and we were on our merry way.

I'm sure all of you will be surprised to learn that all of my things were in the very large suitcase and in one of the smaller ones. Poor Nuggy only got the little one (with some of his things sprinkled around). He kept saying "Paige, you are packing way too much come on." Where I would obnoxiously reply, "Steven! (you know its biz when I say Steven), this is fine don't worry, you cant expect me to pack for over a month in one little overhead carry on bag. All the bags closed easily, we're good."

UMMMMMM......WHY DID I DO THAT?!!!

When I say misery, I mean MISERY, carrying and lugging these insane things around everywhere. It was literally the biggest mistake ever!!

Misery Case #1. Took the train from Rome Airport to Termini because our hotel was within walking distance. OK that's great, but then we get out of the station and SWEAT CITYYYY. Sweat city and we have no idea what to do from there. We had written down instructions (safe to say I was an amateur at this point) but nothing was making sense. No one could speak English and we had these big, bulky, annoying luggage's to lug around on THE bumpiest, unpaved streets! UCHHH. I honestly don't even know how we ended up finding the hotel. Somehow we got to the right street but there were no names on anything, no hotel name, NOTHING. Finally someone told us where it was. We were standing in front of it the whole time, you just had to ring a bell to a no name, old looking door. It definitely did not look like a place that would have what I needed in that moment - and that was AIR CONDITIONING. To my surprise, looks can be deceiving, the place was superrrrr cute and had (minimal) but just enough air conditioning to keep us from melting.

Misery Case #2. We get to Dubrovnik, Croatia and had the day to explore before we had to make our ferry to Split. We left our luggage at the bus station storage and would later come back for it before boarding the ferry nearby. So we have a fabulous lunch, do a walking tour around the Old Town, decide to walk around the ENTIRE walled city because hey, if Khaleesi can do it, so can I. We still had some time to kill so we decided to take the cable car across the street that offers views of the whole city. We thought why not, it's just a 4 minute ride up right? NO. We got a bit greedy and leisured around the area. There was a museum up there & we kind of got lost in it. We finally realized OK this is taking way longer than expected we gotta get a move on here. Of course getting out of there was taking wayy to long and quickly notice time was ticking away. We run out of there in panic mode. We can't find a taxi, but then magically one appeared. We are SOOOO late and still need to get our luggage. It is the last ferry of the day and we were on a strict schedule. We only had the couple of nights in Split and obvs didn't want to miss a thing. Of course, it's rush hour and things are not looking good. The cab driver, bless his soul, waited for us while we got our seven luggage's from storage. Obviously wasted time trying to get them into the trunk. We just held the 2 little ones with us in the back seat. The driver drove us as close as he could to the ferry and then we ran for our lives the rest of the way, again, with all the luggage's. Needless to say, we made that damn ferry!

Trust me the list goes on but I wont tell you every horror story we went through. Just imagine what it was like in these ancient cities, with their small alley ways, and uneven steps trying to get up the hill with these things in the dead summer heat.

Conclusion: What was the upside in all of this? Great work out (for Nuggy at least. Kidding I really helped!) but that's about it. I literally didn't wear half of the things I brought. I learned really quickly that walking around a city for ten hours was not to be done in "cute sandals". I learned that I didn't need to pack my entire wardrobe to look cute. I learned that I really don't care to wear wedges to a day party and heels to a club. CHOOSE ONE, and that is your fancy shoe. I learned that not every single day had to have a new outfit. Oh and mind you - I kind of really got lost in the Europe part of the trip that I neglected the Alaska part, and packed like a complete (excuse my french) jack a**. I maybe brought like 2 long sleeve shirts. I had like one pair of normal jeans (but they weren't even really normal, they were my expensive, tight dark colored ones I wear at night mostly) and one pair of ripped jeans. No joke the entire large suitcase was all summer stuff so it was really troubling having an entire over-sized suitcase with us once the Europe part of the trip was over because it was essentially just storage at that point. No hats, no gloves, no scarves, nothing. We literally bought all those essentials on the cruise or in Vancouver. All in all, the trip was the most amazing thing and this suitcase debacle did not come in the way of that, it was just a total and complete nuisance.