I’m off to Europe for three weeks, what am I supposed to pack?

This is a question that is being asked everyday by people heading off on holiday. In fact at this time of the year I have many hundreds of travelers heading off to Europe, and they are all scratching their heads over what to pack.

 

One Suitcase, one hand luggage - you need to be able to move independently - unless you have your own porter!

So what do we know?

You can take one suitcase, and one item of hand luggage with you. Whatever you pack, you must be sure that you can move around with your two items of luggage – be able to carry/pull your cases out of airports and through train stations!

So now that your have your cases ready we can work out what we pack.

The first thing you need to remember is that you will probably buy new clothes or items while you are away – who wouldn’t? You are probably going to buy things on your travels, so don’t leave home with a full suitcase.

How much can you take? Check with your airline, but normally you’re looking at about 23kg for your suitcase and 7kg for your hand luggage. So when you start your trip you really need to have less than this! Sorry! My last trip away to France I left with 13kg in my suitcase! Plenty of room to expand!

Life is a lot easier to start with room in your suitcase.

So these are my secrets for you all:

Fabric
You should choose fabrics that are easy care, and easy to travel with. I need to be able to wash a shirt at night and hang it up to dry, so that in the morning it will be ready or nearly ready to wear. Some cotton fabrics dry badly and some dry brilliantly – find this out before you go. Cotton T shirts for me are the worst of all, as they take for ever to dry, but having a good white T shirt is handy under a shirt or jacket. So choose carefully. I have some cotton socks that take days to dry, and if you move regularly on your travels this makes life difficult. You can always get your clothes laundered at a laundry or through your hotel, but expect to pay 30 Euros for a shirt – I can buy a new shirt for that!!!

Any clothes that you pack must be comfortable on a train or a plane, and I always like to choose something that looks good! When you pack make sure that everything can mix and match i.e. that any pants/ shorts can go with any shirt etc.

Footwear
For me, I usually get away with two pairs of shoes!

 

These can be worn with shorts, jeans, and even dress up in the evening if they have to! And they can walk all day without a break!

Walking shoes.

That can be worn with jeans and shorts and walk all day, as if they we’re sneakers. I don’t do sneakers!! These shoes can even dress up.

Dress Shoe. That can be worn with your jeans and look sharp, but must be comfortable and “broken in”. These shoes you’d mainly wear in the evening.

There is a third option – a summer mule/ sandal/ jandal for the summer holiday, but they’re not the most practical for walking in cities.

Situation
Where you are going and the type of holiday must be well thought of before packing; is it a beach holiday, backpacking, churches, dinner parties, Paris, countryside. Whenever I go to Paris I would never wear shorts, because the locals (except the students) don’t, the men all wear long trousers/jeans. Also in Paris most people wear jackets – so I do too – they also often in Paris wear scarves summer and winter, but you don’t need to do that, but it is a sharp look, and the locals will think you are local too! But if I wore my Paris clothes when touring Provence, the locals would laugh at me and double the bill at the bar!

Now here is the fun part – PACKING!

My SUITCASE – what it contains:

• Shirts (short sleeve) x 4 (including some dri-fit)
• Shirts (long sleeve) x 2
• T shirt
• Trousers: 1 pair of jeans or longs
• Shorts: 1 pair
• Underwear x 3
• Socks x 3
• Wind/rain jacket
• Shoes x 1 pair
• Swimming togs
• Umbrella (collapsible)
• Coat hangers x 2 (for drying clothes on!)

HAND LUGGAGE:
You must assume that if your luggage went missing this will see you through 24 to 48 hours.
Change of clothes:

• T shirt (white)
• 1 pair undies,
• 1 pair socks
• Toiletries – regulation (including medication)
• Jersey
• Scarf
• Laptop and other technical bits and pieces!
• Paper work

On the plane I WEAR:

• Trousers (jeans or longs)
• Shirt
• Undies, socks (goes without saying?)
• Blazer/jacket (pockets galore for boarding passes, tickets, pens etc.)
• Shoes (of course)
• Security pouch

So sorry ladies I’m not too authoritative on what you have to wear, but either way just remember these things:

• You are limited in what you can pack.
• When you head off on holiday you need free space in your case.
• Remember to mix and match!
• You must be able to go from point A to point B carrying your own luggage!

Have a great holiday, and when you come home make sure your case is bursting full!!

Bon Voyage!

 

 

What am I going to do for my 50^th birthday?

Hide, throw a big party, enrol for a membership at the gym? All of these??

After much deliberation I chose to take my family to Paris in July for my big birthday. I decided against the big party – sorry to my friends! I didn’t need the gym membership – dreamer!  I didn’t want to hide, and Paris sounded perfect!

For my celebration I invited a family with children of the same age as my children – so there were to be four adults and 6 children under 19 years old – all teenagers.

So the plan was in place, and I would take everyone to a concert in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, followed by a slap-up dinner afterwards. For me the Ste Chapelle offered me the ideal way of imposing two of my passions on the teenagers present – history and music!

Ste Chapelle was the Royal Chapel built by St Louis in the early 1200s. He wanted an impressive chapel befitting of the relics he returned from the Crusades with – a piece of wood from the cross that Jesus died on, and the crown of thorns. In the Middle Ages having relics of the Holy story was great for business, as everyone wanted to see them. It was the equivalent of 20^th century tourism. The price paid for relics was extraordinary. To build the St Chapelle St Louis paid one third of the price of the relics to complete his masterpiece.

The Ste Chapelle is barely noticed by the tourist hordes of Paris, and hides amongst the austere surrounds of the Police Department only 400 metres from Notre Dame Cathedral.

Once within the chapel you are greeted by a magnificence difficult to describe. The walls of the chapel are all stained glass windows – walls of glass. As we arrived at our 7pm concert the sun had begun its late afternoon descent. The sunlight had turned the walls of the chapel in to what seemed like a waterfall of multi-coloured diamonds. There was an unequalled brilliance of light of every colour. Even for a teenager that affect made you stop breathing.

It was to this setting that Vivaldi’s Four Seasons struck up creating a precious sensory overload experience.

Before the sun had set for another day the concert was over, and we were back outside in the Police Department car park! I so wanted the young to be moved, and  had a feeling that Vivaldi wouldn’t  stand up against the likes of Britney Spears and Ronan Keating.

I hesitatingly enquired only to receive unanimous support that this was the best thing that they had ever seen.

It was then off to my birthday dinner sitting at a restaurant overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral – almost in heaven!

We are privileged to be able to experience such precious moments.

How to purchase tickets for concerts at Ste Chapelle:

Concerts are held every night during the summer at 7pm and 8.30pm. You can buy these in the week before the night you want to attend or if you turn up half an hour before you should be able to buy tickets at the door.  To pre-book tickets to ensure you get tickets I suggest you go to a FNAC store in Paris. Close by to the Ste Chapelle is a FNAC store on Blvd St Germain mid way between Blvd St Michel and the metro Odeon. Go to the shop and follow signs for “Billeterie” where you can buy your tickets – this is so much easier than standing in a long queue. Also you can purchase tickets to other museums like the Louvre or Musée d’Orsay, which will save you plenty of queuing! Enjoy the concert!!

Sainte Chapelle, Paris

 

New Zealand is situated on the other side of the world, far from most of the world’s population so really only needs these two languages! We have enough problems hanging on to the bottom of the globe, without having to learn any more languages.

I have developed an interest over the years in learning languages and many years back decided to learn Japanese, and of course wanted to master the French language as well.

Over the years I have developed a formula for learning a foreign language should you be considering it. To reach an advanced level you only need 320 hours of tuition. So getting to an intermediate level seems like a huge mountain but once you’re there, you just have a small step left to become advanced at your chosen language.

Coming from Anglophone countries we can become very insular about learning other languages. Especially when one sees in Europe that most young people now speak two or three languages, not including Gobbledygook!

For learning French in Paris I warmly recommend contacting an Alliance Francaise branch.

Once the tour party arrives at the room where the Mona Lisa is housed, you enter the room jam-packed with thousands of camera wielding tourists, you bump your way across the room until you can finally see something on the wall. There it goes! You can probably get about 20m away from this disappointingly small painting. You hold your camera out and put it on full zoom for your photo of someone’s head in front of you! Got it! Now you’ve got to get back to your bus tour, or the metro to take you to the Eiffel Tower!

That’s the Louvre, and an introduction to an illness I call “MLS – the Mona Lisa syndrome”.

I see examples of MLS throughout the travel world. I’ve met people recently who have travelled via Milan for flight connections, and I have said “Did you get to see Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper while there?”.  “No, I had no idea where that painting was?”.  I even heard of an art lecturer travelling with a group through Milan recently who advised his group “no you have no need to see “The Last Supper” while here”.  But this group would have all gone to see the Mona Lisa in Paris. Why is this? 

People suffering from MLS syndrome do only the expected things; Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Paris, London. It is rare to find people who will break the route and see some of the greatest roman art in Ravenna, the breath-taking artworks of Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the architectural beauty of abbeys of Fontenay or Fontevraud in France, or the Cathedral of Chartres or even St Denis in Paris. Sorry it’s not on the list of things to do. But the sad thing is, these are treasures. To spend a moment in any of these places, is a special moment, a moment to savour the wonders of this world. 

I have visited all these places mentioned above in the last few years while escorting tour groups through Europe, and even if I have seen them before, without exception I have been moved by each visit. I remember each time, the intense emotion I felt when viewing “The Last Supper”, I remember saying that when I viewed the basilica in Ravenna that this was the closest to heaven I have ever been.

Over the last few weeks I have asked people to recommend to a first time visitor to the Louvre what they should see there? You know what they said don’t you? “But is there anything else you long to see in the Louvre if you were to go there tomorrow?”, I asked.

I feel now, that to help in a small way to cure the MLS syndrome, I have a serious job in front of me. Over the next weeks I will be writing a series of articles, each week covering one work of art in the Louvre that I long to see again. After you have read these I hope that you will have a new awareness of the Louvre and its highlights. If you have your own favourite please can you share it with me in the comments section below. If you don’t want to miss out on my articles on the Louvre please just click on the “Sign up for Newsletter” button on the top right of this article, and you will be advised each time a new article is published. I can’t wait for next week!

Visiting:

The museum is open every day except Tuesday and the following French holidays: December 25, January 1, and May 1.

 Opening hours

 – Monday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday: from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

 – Wednesday, Friday: from 9 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.

 – Closed on Tuesday

 Entrances:

The Pyramid is the obvious entry point, but for easier entry try going to the Caroussel du Louvre at 99 rue du Rivoli, where there is an entrance. Metro: Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre.