Steamer Trunks

Only four days (well, for us, three, since we leave at 1am) until our vacation cruise with my family! We're still trying to resolve issues with my youngest sister's airline ticket, and I'm starting to think about what to pack.

Seven days in the Caribbean. I had to buy a swim suit. I haven't bought a swim suit in twenty years. Do you know how hard it is to find a swim suit that doesn't expose the pale and pasty parts of me that never see the sun? Eek!

At any rate, since YS (Youngest Sister) has a late flight in to the port city, one of the suggestions from the more experienced cruisers is to not check luggage. That is, pack everything in a carry on.

I mentioned this to The Adorable Husband, who laughed uproariously. "Are you kidding? There is NO WAY that she can just pack a carry on. I'm worried that she'll be able to pack in one suitcase!" WHich is exactly the response I got from my sister when I suggested it as a way to save time.

She laughed. And snorted. And laughed again, a little nervously.

There is no way on earth that she can pack for a week in a carry on. Now me? I can pack for a MONTH in a carry one (well, carry-on sized, although I usually check it for long trips). She can't. No one in my family can. These are people who pack three suitcases for a long weekend. She'll pack six pairs of shoes to go to the beach. These are full-size toiletry packing type people. My family would have fit right in with Victorian traveller with four steamer trunks and a host of servants to haul everything around.

No amount of cajoling works. No amount of quite reasonable arguing that she doesn't need forty-leven different outfits works. This is a woman who normally changes clothes a couple of times as day. I suggested that, just perhaps, she could wear the same pair of pants for more than one day, since we weren't doing anything but lounging around.

The Adorable Husband noted wryly that she doesn't wear one pair of pants for even a whole day!

I shouldn't pick on her, really. She's the only one of us that has any sense of style at all, and I have to admit that she does dress well and looks awfully cute. But when travelling, cute and stylish take a back seat to light, easy to pack, and washable! We're on a cruise ship, people -- we can do laundry (or get people to do laundry for us!)

So I propose a wager: she can pack like she usually does, but at the end of the trip, we will publically air out all the things that she hasn't even touched in the suitcase. She's not allowed to make an extra effort to wear everything, but I bet that she doesn't even touch half of what she packs. Hah!