One-bagging it: Better with wheels

So after my last trip to Europe, one thing I didn't write much about was my attempt at one-bag travel. Well, it was at least what I would call one-bag travel; some purists would say that since I had a carry-on and a personal item, that wasn't technically one-bagging it. Whatever. I was traveling light, and I didn't check any luggage going out on my long-haul flight.

I got really excited about the idea of carry-on only travel as I was planning for my trip. I visited web sites like this one, and this one, and, knowing that I had a trip with lots of legs and travel on all manner of planes, trains, subways, and buses, I was sold.

The premise of one-bag travel is pretty simple — pack really light, and cut out "just in case" items. This is somewhat difficult for me, as I like to be prepared for anything. But when I began planning what I wanted to take on my trip, I found that I could still take the sorts of essentials I like to have (sewing kit, eyeglass repair kit, mini roll of duct tape, enough band-aids for minor surgery) and still have plenty of space in my suitcase. And I did cut out some of the more ridiculous always-prepared items I might have otherwise taken.

The primary way to fit everything into a carry-on is to cut down on your clothing and shoes. I planned to take only two pairs of shoes, plus an odd little pair of lightweight shower flip flop things, and I bought a travel clothesline, sink stopper, and laundry soap sheets to do some wash in the sink (I also planned to, and did, make use of the washer and dryer at our house in Ireland).

eBags Weekender (photo from Amazon)

I also asked for (and received) a new bag for Christmas, and based on the advice of the one-bag experts, I went with one without wheels, the eBags Weekender, a relatively inexpensive foray into the wheel-less bag world. This was a major mind shift for me, as I've always used wheeled suitcases, but I believed the arguments. They were, to sum up: without wheels, your hands are free; without wheels, you don't have to worry about cobblestones in Europe; without wheels, you won't have to worry about stairs; and wheel-less bags are lighter and have more interior space than wheeled bags.

I was all ready for one-bag travel. And then two things happened. One was that I developed a foot problem, and my podiatrist recommended taking my air cast in case I needed it (I did). The other is I came down with some sort of cold/sinus infection/plague just before I left. As a result, I was suddenly lugging around an unexpected air cast and small pharmacopia of cold remedies in my bag, which made it weigh a lot more than I was expecting it would.

(As a disgusting aside: sadly, none of the cold remedies cleared up my illness, even a z-pack...what finally ditched it was throwing up pure stomach acid when I had food poisoning. Nothing burns out your throat-schnoz-ear system faster.)

So, cue me with my heavier-than-expected bag, walking through the various transit systems of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The first annoying thing was that the chest straps that helped make it more stable also made it a pain to take off. So when I was waiting for the subway or on an actual subway car, I'd have to weigh the effort of undoing all the straps against the weight hanging on my back. But the second, far more concerning thing, was all that weight on my back. Turns out, my back is not that strong. As I walked through the endless tunnels of the London Tube system, my shoulders ACHED, and I began to long for wheels — even when I encountered stairs. Said stairs and cobblestones were few and far between when compared to the amount of regular, flat pavement.

The longer I went on my trip, the more unhappy I was about my bag. Everything else worked pretty well. I did laundry in my hotel rooms, and learned the important lesson that things dry much faster if you roll them in a towel after washing them. I discarded a book after I finished it, with a Bookcrossing.com marker in it. I used solid toothpaste and shaving cream sheets and Lush solid shampoo (okay, maybe that last one doesn't count...I use those every day).

I enjoyed not having a ton of stuff to keep track of, and not having to worry about carting around a steamer trunk-sized suitcase. I just really, really, wanted wheels, to the point where I thought about trying to find a store selling one of those collapsible luggage carts to start using on my bag.

Skyway No Weight Ultra (photo from Amazon)

So this year I decided to buy a lightweight wheeled bag. I lusted after the Zuca Pro, but went with the MUCH less expensive Skyway No Weight Ultra. It's only about 2-3 pounds heavier than my eBags backpack, but it has sweet, smooth, ultra-stable wide-stance wheels.

Then I put it to the test. Without an enormous amount of thought put into packing (I took three books, a weight no-no, and too many toiletries and clothes), I took it on the closest thing to a European trip you can do in the U.S. — a six day train trip to Boston. Cobblestones? Not so much, but there were definitely brick streets and stubbly D.C. Metro platform edges. And the Boston T's long subway corridors, punctuated with odd half-flights of stairs, were pretty much the exact equivalent of the London Tube (okay, maybe there wasn't quite as much gap to mind). Thanks to Metro's rampant escalator failures, I also got some experience at carrying it up and down full flights of stairs.

My verdict? Wheels win. Wheels win so much, it's not even funny. It was totally stable on the bricks and platform stubble, and pulled just fine. It has a nice rubber carry handle that I could grab whenever I needed to reach down and carry it on stairs, and because of the light weight, it was no big deal any time I needed to do so. And I popped that sucker up in the overhead train bin with no problems at all.

I'm going to keep my wheel-less bag, as I think there will still be some travel situations where it will be the better bag, and if I do ever need to travel with two bags, having one wheel-less, lighter-packed bag will be really handy. My old asshole-sized carry-on (you know, the one that's just a leetle bit over the appropriate size, which meant I never actually used it as a carry-on) will be the casualty of the new suitcase purchase.

I'm looking forward to one-bagging it again in Europe next year, with wheels. Now I just need a Kindle to deal with that too-many-books problem.

Galway: Worth a four-hour bus ride

Spanish Arch.

Ireland isn't all about beautiful scenery. In fact, usually when I said I was going to Ireland, anyone I talked to was pretty much guaranteed to mention Guinness in the next sentence. And yes, I was planning to partake in my share of Guinness and pub food on this trip.

By the end of my first two days there, I'd had my first draft Guinness (delicious, as expected, and smoother than in the U.S.) and a delicious Irish stew, but our group had also discovered that most pubs closed ridiculously early in Killarney in the off-season. When the three of us who were either brave or crazy enough to undertake a four-hour bus ride to Galway set off for there on Tuesday, we were more interested in seeing the city that had charmed us in pictures. What we ended up finding, though, was a place ripe with charming pubs that stayed open much later than Killarney.

Quay's Pub.

We started with a lunch so late it was nearly dinnertime, at Quay's Pub. This was one of those enormous-but-still-cozy pubs, winding through multiple rooms with a maze of stairs and bars and balconies, warm wood paneling, and worn furniture. We worked our way down to the dining room and ordered, among other deliciousness, a dozen amazingly fresh, super-briny oysters. This was a first oyster experience for my friends Min and Katie, so I was glad they had great ones to try, and it was fun to be the oyster pusher this time. Time will tell if I've created any oyster monsters, as my friends Melissa and Eileen did when they talked me into my first oyster.

Delicious Quay's Pub oysters.

After the Quays, we walked around amongst the pubs and shops, and along the water by the Spanish Arch, snapping pictures as usual, and killing time before meeting up with Katie's friend Luke, and his friend Tom, at a different pub, Naughtons.

Naughtons might well be the quintessential Irish pub. Dimly lit, worn by years of drinkers, with a wall of whiskey behind the bar. We snagged a little paint-chipped snug and settled in for an evening of fun conversation and great beer (I tried a Galway Hooker Ale, which was quite yummy). At some point a music session started up in one of the pub's other rooms — a bunch of young guys, just sitting around a little table crammed with Guinness glasses, playing away. It added a whole other level to the atmosphere, and it was tough not to tap your foot, the music was so good.

It was great fun chatting with Luke and Tom, too. Ireland is a country I think Americans have built up a lot of stereotypes about — many of them stemming from St. Patty's Day — and talking to people from Ireland is really the only way to find out what they really enjoy, and what they're really concerned about. We also learned that the Irish think we have even more stereotypes than we do — for example, that we think everyone in Ireland says "to be sure, to be sure." None of the Americans at the table had ever heard of that.

It was especially good to talk to fun, normal Irish people, because we seemed to have a disproportionate number of encounters with crazy people on the trip. There was the guy in a Killarney pub with the ZZ Top beard who sat down at our table and started talking nonsense about things like mermaids. At some point he decided that I either worked for the KGB or the CIA, probably the result of my attempts to surreptitiously take a picture of a guy across the bar who had a super mullet. All too blurry, sadly. He then proceeded to go off on a lengthy diatribe about how terrible the United States is that seemed to be some sort of redux of the Iran Contra scandal.

As off as that guy was (and as uncomfortable as he made us), the craziest person I saw was actually on the bus ride home from Galway. A man a few seats up from us was reading the newspaper, quite normally. But I happened to look up when he got to a page with a picture of a dolphin on it, when he reached out, and caressed the dolphin on the newsprint. Then he pulled his hand back and WAVED AT IT, and returned to normally reading the newspaper. It was quite impressive. I mean, I ride public transit most days of the week, and I've never seen anything remotely that crazy.

I don't doubt that most people in Ireland are perfectly sane, non-newspaper-dolphin-petting people. We definitely spent one of our most fun evenings of the trip drinking and chatting with two of them, and we all agreed the bus ride had been worth it.

All of my Galway pictures are posted at Flickr, although sadly I was not in picture-taking or video-shooting mode at Naughtons.

Two excellent ways to see a beautiful country

Killarney National Park

So, logically, after travel snafus, my next blog post should be about my first few days in Ireland. But to be honest I've been having a difficult time deciding what to write. I mean, it's like, BREAKING NEWS: IRELAND STILL BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL. I'm sure you're shocked. If you've seen any pictures or any movies set in Ireland, you've seen some of the rolling green hills, the fluffy little sheep, and the jagged cliffs spritzed with white frothy foam. That was what I saw, except in person.

I do, though, think we picked two very good ways to see Ireland's countryside. On Sunday, my first full day in the country, we did a two-hour horse ride through Killarney National Park. Now, up until I went to college, I rode horses nearly every day (at least during the warmer months) for about 10 years. I was in the best shape of my life. Going into this trip, by comparison, I had been mostly sitting around, resting my swollen foot, my muscles growing flabbier and flabbier. Things came back pretty quickly once I got on my horse, O'Sheen*, but my experience made me attempt to use muscles I hadn't used since high school, plus the more recently flabby ones. So for many days after the ride it was my sore legs that slowed me down, not my foot. I really need to stop doing things at the outset of my trips that ruin my legs for much of the rest of the trip.

I really did enjoy riding again, though, and horseback was a perfect way to see Killarney National Park. We covered a lot more ground than we would have walking, and it just felt like a more classic way to get around. Our group had a variety of experience and liking-of-horses levels, but by the end of the ride everyone was trotting quite nicely, and the two of us with more experience got to canter a few times — the last time through a muddy lane where the stocky Irish horses' heavy hooves splashed us thoroughly, but the mud only made it more fun.

Along the ride we saw people walking, and quite a bit of wildlife, including some different breeds of deer that looked more the size of caribou. Most impressive, though, were the mountains, Macgillycuddy's Reeks, rolling soft and green off in the distance, down into the silvery-blue lakes.

The beauty we saw in Killarney National Park was just a sneak preview for our tour Monday of the Dingle Peninsula. Our group size — 11 people — was once again advantageous here, as my friend Meghan was able to book us a sleek little private bus and driver for less per person than it would have cost us to each book a seat on a big bus tour. It's a good thing we weren't on a big bus tour, either, because our crew likes to take pictures, and we made a LOT of photo stops.

Taking so many pictures on our Dingle tour.

Eventually our driver realized that our camera fingers got itchy at the sight of any substantial cliffs, charming beaches or particularly cute sheep, and started stopping without even asking. He'd pull over, and say, in his thick Irish accent: "Get off my friiiiiickin' bus!" We all agreed that that would never, in fact, get old.

The photo stops also never got old, mostly because as we drove along from Inch Strand, through Dingle town, and out to Sleigh Head, around every bend, the scenery just got more and more spectacular — rolling hills broken into rough rectangles by stone fences, 4,000-year-old beehive huts still standing on windswept hillsides, daredevil sheep grazing where one false step would send them tumbling into the jewel blue ocean, and, of course, the cliffs.

Sleigh Head

I think that's really all I can say about my first two days in Ireland. I mean, I guess I did manage to write a post, but really, this one's all about the pictures. Here they are, for Killarney and Dingle. And here's a bit of video from our horse ride:

* I'm probably spelling that wrong, but I don't think the horse will mind.

Okay, so I took a cab this time

Paddington Station in London. More train and station pictures.

Although you wouldn't expect it from this oft-neglected blog, I just got back from two weeks in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Over the course of my last big trip, I turned Channel Six into a travel blog and managed a post most days. This time, I knew my internet access was going to be spotty and, well, I wanted to maximize my precious Europe time and save the posts for back at home. So NOW it's time for some trip blogging.

As the title of this post would indicate, after last year's public-transit-all-the-way New England trip, this time I ended up having to take a cab. Two cabs, actually. On my New England trip, I felt like everything came together perfectly, like I was just executing my travel plans, one leg of the trip after another. I might have been lucky. I mean, I planned an entire trip around Amtrak and didn't have any problems.

This time, things did not go according to plan. A lot.

I should have known when I had an entire middle row to myself on my redeye British Airways flight over. As I stretched out for some true jet-lag-preventing sleep, in retrospect I can see that I was sucking up all of my logistical karma. But I didn't think about such things.

Roman ampitheatre ruins

I landed in London, saw a quick sight (the Roman ampitheatre ruins in the basement of Guildhall Art Gallery), and then headed to St. Pancras train station for a train up to London Luton airport, for my flight to Ireland. I was on the train when they announced that they were at a stand; there'd been a person killed by a train on the route we were supposed to take. I had just read "Waiting on a Train," and I should have known we were screwed. Instead of figuring out an alternate plan, though, I listened to the employees at the station when they said it would be another half hour, another 40 minutes.

I'd given myself a ton of time to get to Luton, but eventually it was starting to run out. A cab from St. Pancras would have been hugely expensive — and might not have made it in time with traffic, since Luton is so far from the city it probably shouldn't have "London" in its name. I asked at the information desk if there was another way to get there. Go over to King's Cross, and take the train to Hitchin, they said, there's a bus that goes from there. And how much longer was the train from St. Pancras going to be? They didn't know, but it could be another couple hours.

Hitchin it was, then. Fortunately King's Cross station is right next to St. Pancras. I should mention at this point that I was wearing an air cast, the result of a mysteriously swollen foot that my podiatrist never quite came up with a diagnosis for. But I still managed to book it over to King's Cross, inquire there about the train to Hitchin, and get on. At this point, I figured I had about a 50/50 chance of making my flight. I sat through about a 45-minute train ride, tense, staring out the window and willing the stops to go by faster, not sure what this mystery bus situation was going to be like when I got there.

But when I got out at Hitchin, there was a cab stand. For once in my travels, I said screw the bus, and asked the first driver in line how much and how far. 24 pounds and 20 minutes. I made my flight to Ireland's Kerry Airport, and in fact took another cab (this one planned) to the house in Killarney my friends and I were renting for the week.

That didn't end up being the only logistical problem I had during the trip. I used London as my transportation base, and I was supposed to take the Caledonian Sleeper train from there to Edinburgh. Except when the train car attendant asked me when I wanted my breakfast, we had a conversation that went a bit like this:

Me: Well, let's see, we get in to Edinburgh at...

Attendant (in heavy Scottish accent): Yuuuur nawt gowin to Edinburrrahhh. Yuuuur gowin ta Glaaasgoow.

Me: !!!!!

Turns out the terrible weather that had hit Edinburgh the in the days before my trip up there had prevented the Edinburgh sleeper train from making it back. So they were putting everyone on the Glasgow train instead. All we had to do was take a train to Edinburgh from Glasgow. From a different train station. With no maps or human guidance.

The fact that I'm back here to write this blog post would indicate that I did manage to get from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I did so using a combination of following people with luggage, using Glasgow's well-placed maps, and The Force. I should note that The Force is pretty strong in me. I use it every time I need to find my way out of Baltimore.

There were other problems, too, aside from occasionally needing to wear the air cast when my foot got bad. There was the sinus infection I started the trip with (the best thing I've ever done to prepare for a trip was ask my doctor for a just-in-case Z pack prescription). There was the two-hour delay on my flight home to BWI airport that pushed me onto a midnight train home (by the time I stepped into my condo I had been up almost 24 hours straight and my eyelids were about ready to stick to my eyeballs, but I had managed to avoid a third cab and the ensuing environmental guilt).

And there was the food poisoning. Yes, food poisoning. A friend and I both came down with it after (we think) some bad fish at a pub on the Dingle peninsula. I ended up missing our group's day trip to Cork, and learning that nothing is worse when it comes up than black pudding. Nothing. After a night of throwing up, and a day of lying in bed feeling miserable, I felt well enough to keep going and seeing things. And after a few days, I was back to gargantuan pub meals, including the best fish and chips in the history of fish and chips. But more on that later.

It might seem like a real downer to make my first post about all of the things that went wrong on this trip. But there was a positive that came out of everything — I learned that it can feel far more empowering when you find your way out of a jam than when you execute a perfect plan. Many of the times things went wrong, I was by myself, and I had to figure out what to do myself, and I did it.

As it turns out, that's a pretty exhilarating feeling. Plus, it's a lot more exciting to use The Force to get to Edinburgh than out of Baltimore.

London Tube train coming in.