Thanks
lovetravellingoz for the response.
I know we are going O/T, but talking about this stuff is gold....
The biggest culprit was mainly clothes and shoes...and even more so as each of the 3 apartments we had had washer/dryer and so we could have travelled even lighter than usual, rather than heavier. Basically my wife and I had heaps of clothes that we never wore and extra shoes/boots that were not needed.
Lucky you re washer/dryer. I brought along enough clothes for one week, and I did a
lot of sink washing (what can I say - almost every day). Then again, we were on an average of 1 city per day, except for Rome, Paris and London. We had one chance in Paris for a proper machine wash, but that was it.
I brought along a pullover which I never wore (my large jacket I wore all the time was sufficient). It did make for good padding for the bottles of alcohol I took home, but apart from that it was dead space/weight.
Though yes could not understand why we needed 3 hair-dryers, especially since all our accommodation was meant to have one. Though my 16 year old when queried on this pre-trip just replied that is just a typical male view. :shock:
Are they all different hair dryers? That could be why. Don't ask why a hair dryer isn't a hair dryer isn't a hair dryer, but there you go.
Perhaps you should've asked SWMBO what Miss 16yo meant? Unless she would've snorted the same remark
Not really checking everything we all had and so there was more overlap than required...so for example having 4 nokia phone chargers...and way too much shampoo/toothpaste taken.
The problem with only 1 charger is that only one phone can be charged at a time. Mightn't be a problem with proper battery management, but that's something for you, SWMBO and your daughters to decide (i.e. how much you used your phones). Then again, that means everyone having a power adapter and finding 4 free electrical sockets in every room you stayed in! Now there's a challenge.
Too much toothpaste? I can't see how you can do that. Shampoo - well, with women you know that insisting on the same brand for everyone is just verboten. (See the hair dryer argument
).
Yes now my girls are now "ladies" rather than "girls" = more per head taken. However it was mainly mum and dad who took more than we needed.
Which alludes to the stated position by the OP about his parents and how they pack/travel.
First apartment's lift was tiny and so we all plus bags could not fit in together (= small hassle)
Same here. A couple of lifts were so small that only one of us with our bag could go up/down at a time. One lift I believe had a 'weight limit' enforced so that really only meant one of us and one bag at a time!
We took a number of trains...so fitting in the bags was awkward at times as they do not allow enough communal luggage space.
Agreed here. Trains are not ideal for someone with a big bag, unless you get on first and take the common storage space ASAP.
In other cases, our luggages could fit in the overhead space, but lifting 20-25kg of bag at times was no easy task. One time we had a sleeper car and our bags would not fit under the bunk and probably not in the small storage compartment next to the top bunk.
Luckily for the trip we had 1 spare bunk so we put our bags on that.
We arrived by train into Paris and used the Metro..plus for departure. when you change lines on the Metro you often have to negotiate many sets of stairs as there are often no escalators).
Ah
. We had to experience many sets of stairs in our travel, and yes there were quite a few spots with no escalators or lifts. Paris was one and Barcelona also comes to mind. Same thing with accommodations. This was probably the number one gripe of my travelling companion (i.e. accessibility or lack thereof whilst lugging our bags around).
First day in Paris it was 37degrees..so dragging heavy bags around was hard yakka. Was most grateful at that moment that we had ground floor apartment (cool) rather than one of the rooftop apartments which had looked tempting but were 6 floors up with no lift...and no-air-conditionaing!!!
That would hurt - we went in the winter (not dead freezing winter!) so not too bad in this respect. We did get lost in Venice for a couple of hours. It was fairly warm but the killer was walking up and down all the little bridges and steps crossing all the canals. And of course getting lost just added to the frustration.
In saying all of this, you were all on premium travel all the way (plus possibly Star Alliance Gold?), so I assume even though you had quite a lot of luggage during the trip, you never had to pay any excess baggage fees?
