Some packing lessons

As we wrapped up our stay in London, I spent a good part of Friday at the Victoria and Albert museum, which I thought was one of the coolest places I'd been. My opinion, better than the British museum. I couldn't begin to describe the expansiveness of the collections, everything from fashion pieces (thought of you KT), Victorian treasures, Asian and Indian artifacts, silver and gold pieces and whole monuments and cathedral facings, right inside the building. It was huge and really well done. Also, a nice lead in to my lessons... on packing. The museum clearly had space and time also mastered.

With the drama surrounding our departure, I took a less methodical approach to packing than even I would typically, and threw everything I could think of into a bag. Yep one bag. Wade has always been a bit of a pack rat, but I won't pick on him publicly here - he had two :) So, anyhow, we had some very heavy bags, a fact that Northwest had picked up on quickly before our trip to Chicago - $50 in overweight baggage charges. Yuck. So, we decided to pick up another duffel in London to distribute the weight better - seemed like a great plan since I only had one bag. So we showed up at the airport for our flight to Scotland, a little puddle hop on EasyJet. Except that they only allow one bag per customer not two, and in any case no more than 20 kg. So, we could pay 150 pounds ($300) or rearrange our bags again in the middle of the airport. Yep, we did that. Then checked our bags into storage for the now seemingly reasonable cost of $75. Long story, but has me thinking... what does one really need to pack? For a stay of 12 days? How about a year?
Turns out my stuff is not as cool as the artifacts in the V&A museum. So next time, I'm going to leave them at home. The only thing I've decided I need to survive (family, friends and mushy stuff aside of course) is COFFEE. Even at $8 a latte, that is a need I can't seem to part with.

So, we're off to the Edinburgh Castle now (after Starbucks). I'll try to write again soon.