Greece-bound and No Donkey? For These 3 Reasons, You'll Want to Pack Light
Remember, the first syllable of the word luggage is "lug"
Confession: I think CNN is a sad joke of place. Christiane Amanpour, serial blowhard, can always be counted on to ask the right people the wrong questions. A woman who does her lib-tard bosses’s foul bidding by pestering Kyriakos Mitsotakis about “pushbacks” instead of asking why Turkey sends refugees barreling across the Aegean. Oh, and awalking freak like Richard Quest prances around Central Park with a rope tied to his bajoobies and gets his own show. Christ Licht starts to make cable great again and is then given the boot. However, formerly watchable CNN did break this story about the new European tourist stampede before The New York Times did.
The Instagram brigades have, along with the Ikea-furnished AirBnb hovels that house them,l ed to the near-ruin of places like Barcelona and Venice, but you knew that. The problem is that fellow travelers and residents alike now have no choice but to put up with them. A new reality! So adjustments to important parts of the travel process are no longer an option. Unless like some Americans you place no value on your time, new tactics are essential.
The first thing to modify is your thinking about luggage. Also known as baggage or, in some circles, your stuff or your thangs. Travel light, or miss your flight! Well okay, you can check that bag, but realize your flight might take off without it. Or that you after standing in line for an hour at customs in Madrid or wherever you may have to wait another half hour or more in a crowded airless for your bag to spout from the carousel.
If’s Paris, make that an hour, because when French airport workers are not on strike, they are being French airport workers. Oh, you’ll see what I mean by that, you France-bound nomads out there! Pack le snack!
Also, realize that beyond the hefty extra checked baggage fees you’ll have to pay on most inter-European flights, bulky luggage will slow you down generally. It may not even all fit into the trunk of your taxi or rental car. Oh, you’ll just rent an SUV, you say? Go see how much one of those costs per day, and you won’t be saying it anymore.
As city centers in Europe grow ever more compressed under the weight of the crocs of tourist idiots who actually go to places because, as CNN diplomatically pointed out, they’ve, wow, seen them on some idiotic TV show like Lorna in London or some other piece of cheap netflixy slime-crap, you have to do your best to move like a butterfly to see the sights you want and move on and the less you’re encumbered with in general the better off you’ll be.
After all, you’re not a so-called digital nomad and you’re not moving in, you’re here to visit. You can always buy whatever you need — a few extra pairs of socks or T-shirts, whatever — on the spot and then if you need, buy a cheap suitcase for the trip back home.
As for Greece, are you traveling around the islands on a private yacht? If so, good for you — maybe you are Lauren Sanchez or her ugly boyfriend!
But if not, you will be taking the ferry, along with all those hordes who spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to come to Santorini so they can take pictures of themselves in Santorini pretending to be able to afford that Sanchez/Bezos lifestyle. Well my pretties, you can’t. But you can imagine what’s its like toting luggage on to and off a packed ferry boat as it lurches into port? Ah, you can’t? Well let me tell you: it’s not fun.
If fun is what you want to have, pack light, boycott evil AirBnb, and for God’s sake if you are going to crowd up some European town or island because you saw it on some dumb TV show made by people whose idea of travel is long weekend in Cabo then at least have the decency to keep it to yourself, and read a damn book.
Or rent a donkey. Airbnb does donkeys now too, right? Fucking smh. Pack light.