Izmir

We’re off to Vienna, Austria tomorrow for a pre-cruise stay before we embark Viking’s Longship Rinda on the 13th.

What does that mean?

Packing! Ugh!!!!

River cruises carry an inherent risk. If the water level is too low, the cruise can be disrupted. Similarly, if the water level is too high, the cruise can also be disrupted.

More often than not, the disruption is in the form of having to be bused between ports. If you’re lucky, you embark another vessel at the port to which you are bused and cruise merrily down the river again. If you are unlucky, you may have to be bused between multiple ports, overnighting on different ships or hotels in between.

In any event, being bused essentially means having to pack/unpack your bags … as many times as necessary.

To ease the chore of having to pack/unpack — should it become necessary to do so — we purchased a couple of Biaggi Hangmates Hanging Zipcubes on sale … in lieu of investing in new luggage with built-in shelves. We’ll hang the de-compressed zipcubes in the closet in our cabin and keep our clothes nice and tidy on the shelves. If it becomes necessary to re-pack for a bus transfer, we’ll just compress the zipcubes, place them in our bags, collect our toiletries, and voilà … we’ll be ready to go.

I was able to pack all the clothing I am taking on the river cruise — two week’s worth of mix & match outfits, smalls, socks, and what have you — on the shelves and easily compress them into the built in cube. If I worked at it, I could probably get three weeks worth of clothes into the cube.

Technically, if we didn’t have walking boots, cold-weather and rain gear, toiletries, and electronics and camera accoutrements, we could just carry the cubes onto the airplane, and then de-compress and hang them when we get to our destination. But since we do have that extra stuff, we are traveling with a small suitcase each. The cube sits in the bottom of the bag; and the top half holds all the other stuff (which we will pull out of the bag as necessary). Of course, we have small carry-on bags as well for electronics, meds, and such … stuff that we would never put in checked bags.

Though it might not seem so to some readers, we are traveling quite light for this cruise … definitely much lighter than usual. We just need to put last minute items in our bags tomorrow morning and then we’re off.Weiterlesen