There are people who travel a lot. And then there are people who have spent more than three decades designing trips, scouting hotels, walking trails, navigating airports and train stations, and figuring out what actually makes travel easier.
Classic Journeys founders Susie and Edward Piegza fall decidedly into the second category. Ask them for their best packing advice, and the answer is remarkably simple:
Travel light.
For a Classic Journeys trip, that means one 22-inch roller board suitcase and one backpack per person. Not a roller board plus a big checked suitcase. Not a “just in case” duffel.
A 22-inch roller board and a backpack. The surprising part? Everything you really need can fit inside them.
Why Packing Light Makes a Better Trip
“After more than 30 years of traveling around the world, we’ve learned that the people who pack the least almost always experience the most,” says Edward.
Part of the reason is obvious. If you don’t check a suitcase, an airline can’t send it on a different vacation than yours.
Your luggage stays with you. You move through the airport more easily. When you land, there’s no baggage carousel to wait around. Trains and transfers are simpler. Hotel arrivals and departures are easier. And you aren’t wrestling a large suitcase over cobblestones, up steps or through a centuries-old hotel where the charming elevator may have been designed for two people—and not necessarily two people plus their luggage.
But for Classic Journeys guests, there’s another advantage that isn’t as obvious.
Packing smaller helps us travel smaller
Our trips aren’t designed around big motor coaches. We want to get you into the heart of the places you’ve traveled so far to experience: small villages, historic centers, country roads, trailheads and tucked-away places where oversized vehicles often can’t go.
Compact luggage allows us to use appropriately sized vehicles that can get closer to those places. In other words, the size of your suitcase can actually affect the way you experience your destination.
Start With a 22-Inch Roller Board
Susie and Edward recommend starting with a 22-inch roller board rather than deciding what you want to bring and then finding luggage large enough to hold it. Hard-sided or soft-sided doesn’t matter. What matters is the size.
That’s an important distinction. Give yourself a giant suitcase and human nature has a funny way of finding things to put in it. Start with a 22-inch roller board, and you begin asking a much better question:
What will I actually use?
Add a comfortable backpack for the things you’ll want with you in transit and during the day—your passport, medications, electronics, sunglasses, water bottle and a light layer—and you have all the luggage you need.
Pack for the Trip You’re Taking
One of the easiest ways to overpack is to pack for every possibility.
What if it’s unusually cold? What if we go somewhere very fancy? What if I suddenly need three pairs of pants I haven’t worn in six months?
As Susie puts it, “Pack for the trip you’re taking, not every trip you can imagine taking.”
Look at your itinerary. Think about the weather, the walks, the meals and the activities you’ll actually be enjoying. Classic Journeys trips are intentionally casual. During the day, you’ll want comfortable clothing that moves easily with you. In the evening, smart casual is right for virtually everything we do.
That means you don’t need separate wardrobes for daytime and nighttime.
Think in Layers, Not Outfits
The secret to getting everything into a 22-inch roller board isn’t wearing the same thing every day. It’s choosing things that work together—and letting them do more than one job.
A shirt or top you wear to dinner tonight can become part of tomorrow’s walking outfit. Pants worn for an evening can come back into rotation during the day. You’re not packing a separate wardrobe for every activity. You’re letting the same carefully chosen pieces do double duty.
That’s one of Susie and Edward’s favorite packing tricks:
Dress it up first. Walk in it later.
For cooler destinations or seasons, follow the same philosophy. Think layers rather than automatically reaching for one bulky piece. Lightweight insulating layers and a packable weather-resistant shell can handle an extraordinary range of conditions without consuming half your suitcase.
And then there are pashminas.
Susie’s Secret Weapon: The Pashmina
Susie is the undisputed pashmina queen of Classic Journeys. She rarely travels without a couple of them.
A pashmina takes up almost no room, but earns its place in her 22-inch roller board several times over. It can transform a simple outfit for dinner. It adds warmth when an evening turns cool. It works as an impromptu blanket on a train or plane.
And on a long flight, Susie has been known to pull out a pashmina, add a little lavender, settle in and create her own private cocoon somewhere over the Atlantic.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that belongs in a well-packed suitcase: lightweight, versatile and useful in more ways than one.
The Great Piegza Packing Debate: Cubes or Rolls?
After decades of traveling together, Susie and Edward agree completely about the size of the suitcase.
22 inches.
What happens inside it is another matter entirely.
Susie is a packing-cube devotee. She organizes her clothes into cubes so everything has a place and she can find what she wants without dismantling the contents of her suitcase every time she changes hotels.
Edward? He rolls everything. Shirts. Pants. Walking clothes. If it can be rolled, it gets rolled.
So which method is better? We’re not getting involved in that debate.
Both methods work because Susie and Edward follow the same, more important rule: they don’t use clever packing techniques as an excuse to bring more stuff.
Packing cubes can keep a suitcase beautifully organized. Rolling can make excellent use of limited space and make it easy to see what you’ve packed. Try both and use whichever method works for you.
Just remember that the goal isn’t to perform an engineering miracle that squeezes the contents of a 25-inch suitcase into a 22-inch one.
The goal is to need less in the first place.
Shoes: Two Pairs Are Usually Plenty
Shoes may be the greatest enemies of carry-on packing.
For a walking vacation, your first priority is obvious: a comfortable, well-broken-in pair of walking or trail shoes with good traction. Then bring one other lightweight pair that works for evenings and casual exploring.
Better yet, wear the bulkier walking shoes on the plane. Two pairs. Two purposes. Done.
Let Your Backpack Do Its Job
Your backpack isn’t overflow space for everything that didn’t fit into your suitcase.
Think of it as your travel-day and day-trip bag.
Keep your passport, wallet, phone, medications, glasses, chargers and other essentials there. Add a water bottle, sunglasses and whatever light layer you may want during the day.
Once you’re on tour, the same backpack becomes the perfect companion for your daily explorations.
One roller board. One backpack. Both have a job.
What About Toiletries?
This is another place where ounces quickly become pounds.
Bring travel-sized quantities of the products you really care about. Remember that hotels provide many basic toiletries, and pharmacies and shops exist virtually everywhere we travel.
Unless there’s a particular product you truly can’t live without, you probably don’t need to transport your bathroom from home.
Leave a Little Empty Space
Here’s a packing tip that has nothing to do with getting there and everything to do with coming home:
Don’t leave home with a completely full suitcase.
You may discover a scarf in a village market, something from an artisan you’ve just met, or another small treasure that will remind you of your journey years from now.
Leave yourself a little room for serendipity.
And if you fall in love with something too large to carry? Ship it home.
The Best Packing Rule of All
After decades of traveling, Susie and Edward don’t think of packing light as giving something up.
Quite the opposite.
It’s freedom.
Freedom from baggage carousels. Freedom from worrying about delayed or misplaced luggage. Freedom to move easily through airports, hotels and train stations.
And when you travel with Classic Journeys, there’s another kind of freedom.
Because our guests travel with compact luggage, we can use smaller vehicles instead of large motor coaches. That helps us get you closer to the villages, trailheads, historic centers and tucked-away places you’ve traveled so far to experience.
Less time dealing with luggage and logistics. More time actually being where you came to be.
So when that empty suitcase is sitting on your bed and you’re tempted to add one more outfit “just in case,” remember the advice of two people who have packed for thousands of travel days:
One 22-inch roller board. One backpack.
Then zip them up and go. Because the less time you spend managing your things, the more time you have to experience the world.
