I’m considering onebagging through Italy and France in May by train, no airplane travel involved. Do you have any tips or tricks for doing that? We’ll be two women traveling, no formal events to attend or special equipment activities planned.
A lot of the basic onebag strategies will apply to your train trip.
- Keep your wardrobe simple/versatile
- Rolling your clothes into a packing cube can get them pretty tight/compact
- Coordinate with your friend to avoid carrying any redundant items, share whatever possible (USB brick with multiple ports for charging phones, toothpaste, shampoo, sunscreen, brushes, etc)
- Checking the forecast may help you eliminate bulky items like a rain shell or sweater perhaps
- Replace your toiletry bag with a ziploc
Thank you for all of your ideas! I will remember the ziploc bag. I’ve usually only done that for planes, but it is undoubtedly practical and less space consuming for other kinds of trips too.
Luckily we already share most toiletries, but I’ll suggest making a shared list and remove any duplicates.
What’s onebagging? Backpacking with a weekender bag?
That’s basically it, trying to avoid checked luggage and getting it done with a backpack. It’s an austere existence but it certainly makes travelling more simple and stress-free in most cases
My sister and a friend did this all across Europe, but with the addition of bikes so they could explore further past transit routes. The trains had bike storage.
OH, bikes! That would be so much fun.
Even though going by train will free you from carry on size limits, still try and stay light.
How long are you planning on traveling? Have you done much onebagging before?
We’ll be traveling for between two and three weeks. This will be my longest trip with only a small ish backpack, but I have done a week before.
At that length, one of the biggest changes from a week long trip was laundry. If you’re staying places with washing machines, you still have to take into consideration detergent. You might be able to get small amounts locally, but I ended up only being able to find large bottles of heavily perfumed liquids that were a pain to deal with. Dryers were non-existent or ineffective, so having the time and tools for air drying were also important. Local Laundromats had the detergent built into the cycle, but again it was heavily perfumed. But they were the only place with working dryers. There’s always sink laundry in a pinch; this has some recommendations.
Having clothes that you don’t have to wash as often helps as well; there’s a reason every one bag site recommends merino wool in spite of its price. It picks up odors less which also means you can reduce some of the pieces you’d take just to be able to have clean clothes on any given day.
I guess I’ll be traveling with a baggie of white stuff, then! I’ll bring some from home, as well as a line for air drying. Thank you for the link, I had completely forgotten about inflatable hangers.
If you’re willing to do laundry more frequently (and even by hand in the bath) you can manage with a tiny pack
I’m hoping to get by on around three to four days of clothes, but it would be fun to try no-bag sometime.
Get a small collapsible backpack like this: Patagonia Terravia Tote Bag Backpack 24L so you can have a few things on hand during train rides, and have the option to lock your main bag in a locker at the train station or your hotel room while you’re exploring. In Italy (Germany as well, maybe France too, I have less experience there) there are often really nice, cheap public aquaplexes with saunas and pools and hot tubs, that can be a nice way to refresh that is less gross than a hostel bathroom. Have two wallets, one for little stuff with a coin pouch and one for larger sums and your passport. Italy and France are both pretty safe but… Still worth it. Always have wet wipes. Remember to validate your tickets in Italy.
I had no idea about the aquaplexes, that’s so nice. I’ll add wet wipes to my list. That seems like a very good comfort item with many possible use cases.
Thank you also for reminding me about ticket validation in Italy. I need to make a list of dos and don’ts for each country.
