Sunday, January 9, 2011

Travel accessories, LL Bean style.

BF and I both received gift certificates for LL Bean this past Christmas. It was an incredibly nice gesture, but our first thoughts were 1) we've never, ever shopped at an LL Bean before, and 2) where the heck can you find a LL Bean store? Turns out, we'd never shopped there before because there are no stores in California!

Fortunately for us, LL Bean has an extensive, easy to use website, and while checking it out, we discovered several things that could come in quite handy on our impending trip!

Here is my current wish list of travel accessories from LL Bean.

Balanzza Luggage Scale - $25


With all of the charges associated with luggage these days, it seems like this would be super useful! (Especially as a woman who has had to pay "heavy luggage fees!")


Travel Alarm Clock - $19.95


The last trip I took, I did not have a travel alarm. While BF thought this was great - no schedules! - it sort of stressed me out. I rolled with it, but there were a couple mornings where we severely overslept and lost out on doing some of the things we wanted to do. So on this trip, I'm determined to bring a travel alarm, especially since there's much more bus and train travel involved this time around.

Travel SpacePak - $19.95

Space bags. I've used them before, but never on a trip. I've heard great things about them, though, and I think in our case, they'll really come in handy. We're attempting to pack very little for a good length of time. I'm thinking that these would be best for dirty clothes - then they serve a dual purpose of saving space and also of keeping the dirty clothes separate from the rest of my things.

Adventure Duffle - $49.95



BF has an awesome, but ancient duffle bag that he usually uses to travel, and it's almost to the point where it's going to break. I'd rather it break on a weekend trip to Santa Barbara than while running to a train in Italy, so I've been dropping hints about getting a new one. This one from LL Bean seems nice - roomy, light weight, and water resistant, too!

Travel accessories I already have and can't live without? Freezer size ZipLock bags - for any number of things, including to carry toiletries and avoid spillage - a small, spare bag pack or duffle bag that can collapse and be in your luggage on the way there and offer expansion room for the way home, and travel plug converters. They're priceless, I'm telling you.

Other travel accessories that I'm looking into? A small, refillable water bottle (the CamelBak ones are my favorite), a reinforced camera strap, and a mini perfume bottle. I found a great one that lets you take a small amount of any perfume you have! What a great idea!

Among the travel accessories I will not be bringing? Travel wallets. You know what I'm talking about, right? Those travel bags that you wear under your clothes to "safeguard" your belongings, when really their bulky appearance just targets you as a tourist? Yeah. I'm not into them. I mean, it's up to individual travelers obviously, I've just found I have never used them, and just use the "situational awareness" method of paying attention to your surroundings to avoid theft.

What are your travel accessory essentials?

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