Travel Routine
Jet lag has a direction, and that changes what works
Flying east and flying west are different physiological problems. Almost all generic jet lag advice ignores this.
Nadia Halloran
Editor, Suitcase Theory
Nadia edits Suitcase Theory and has been running the same 34-litre bag since 2018.
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51 articles
Trains & Ground
Rail passes are usually the wrong answer, and sometimes the right one
A pass wins on specific patterns of travel and loses badly on others. The break-even is easy to calculate and rarely calculated.
Where You Sleep
Hostels, guesthouses and the middle nobody books
Between a hostel dorm and a chain hotel sits a category that is consistently better value and consistently overlooked.
Travel Routine
Doing laundry on the road is a planning decision
How you handle washing determines how much you carry, which determines almost everything else about a trip.
Packing
Wheels or straps: the ground decides the bag
The argument between suitcases and backpacks is settled by the surfaces you will actually cross, not by preference.
Packing
What a personal item actually measures
The second bag is the most misunderstood allowance in aviation, and on strict carriers it is the only free one.
Packing
Shoes are the volume problem, and there are three answers
Footwear occupies more of a bag than any other category by shape rather than weight, and the solutions are limited and known.
Airports & Flying
Boarding groups are a loading algorithm, not a status ladder
Airlines sequence boarding to move a full aircraft through one door quickly, and the order tells you how the aircraft is loaded.
Airports & Flying
Overbooking is a statistical bet, and you can be the payout
Airlines sell more seats than exist because a predictable share of passengers never show up, and the mechanism has rules you can…
Airports & Flying
Turbulence is a comfort problem before it is a safety one
Understanding what moves the aircraft, and what the seatbelt sign is actually managing, changes how the experience feels.
Trains & Ground
Ferries run on tides, weather and the vehicle deck
Sea crossings follow constraints that have nothing to do with passenger convenience, which explains most of what confuses…
Trains & Ground
Bike, scooter and moped hire has one expensive clause
Two-wheeled hire is cheap, convenient and the single most common way travellers discover their insurance does not cover them.
Booking & Money
Booking through an intermediary adds a party to every problem
Agents and comparison sites are useful for finding fares and unhelpful when something goes wrong, and the reason is structural.
Where You Sleep
Check-in times exist because of housekeeping, not policy
The gap between checkout and check-in is a cleaning schedule, which is why it can sometimes be negotiated and sometimes cannot.
Where You Sleep
Non-refundable room rates are an insurance decision
The discount for prepaying is the price of the risk you have agreed to carry, and it is worth pricing rather than assuming.
Where You Sleep
Hotels overbook too, and being walked has rules
Accommodation is oversold on the same logic as aircraft seats, and what happens next depends on how you booked.
Where You Sleep
Room location inside a hotel is a request worth making
Two rooms at the same rate can deliver completely different nights, and the difference is decided by a floor plan you never see.
Where You Sleep
Long stays are a different market with different prices
Past a certain number of nights, accommodation stops being priced per night and starts being priced as a let.
Where You Sleep
Sleeping at the airport is a plan, not a failure
An overnight in a terminal is survivable and occasionally sensible, provided the decisions are made before midnight rather than…
Where You Sleep
Breakfast included is a pricing decision, not a perk
Whether to take the rate with breakfast depends on what is open near you at seven in the morning, and on almost nothing else.
Travel Routine
A travel day works better as a routine than as willpower
The days you move are when things get lost, missed and forgotten, because the ordinary structure that prevents that is absent.
Travel Routine
Document copies: what to carry and where to keep them
Losing a passport is an administrative problem whose length depends almost entirely on what you can prove about yourself.
Travel Routine
Passport rules that are not the expiry date
Being refused boarding on a valid passport is common, because validity is only one of several conditions.
Travel Routine
Entry requirements change, and nobody tells you
Visa rules, health forms and travel authorisations are amended constantly, and the only reliable source is the official one.
Travel Routine
Phone data abroad: roaming, eSIMs and local SIMs compared
Three ways to get connected, with different costs, different failure modes and one that keeps your number working.
Travel Routine
Working from the road is a bandwidth and time-zone problem
The obstacles to working while travelling are rarely motivational. They are upload speed, power sockets and the overlap between two…
Travel Routine
The admin that accumulates while you are away
A trip generates a queue of small obligations at home, and the ones that matter have deadlines rather than reminders.
Travel Routine
Eating on the move without losing the afternoon
Travel disrupts meals in predictable ways, and the resulting energy crashes are usually a timing problem rather than a food problem.
Travel Routine
Exercise on the road survives only if it is small
The routines that continue while travelling are the ones that need no equipment, no booking and no more than twenty minutes.
Travel Routine
Coming home is the leg nobody plans
The return is treated as the end of a trip rather than part of it, which is why the days afterwards are so consistently rough.
Packing
Fabric decides how little you can carry
The number of garments you need is set by how fast they dry and how long they stay wearable. Both are properties of the material…
Packing
Zips, seams and the four places a bag actually fails
Luggage rarely fails all at once. It fails at four predictable points, and three of them are repairable if you notice early enough.
Packing
Cables and chargers are a category, not an afterthought
Electronics arrive in the bag with a tail of accessories nobody counts. Treated as one system, that tail usually halves.
Packing
Leave the bag one-fifth empty, and know what for
A bag packed to capacity has no capacity. The space you leave is doing work, and it is worth deciding in advance what that work is.
Airports & Flying
What the security scanner is actually looking at
Cabin baggage screening reads density and composition rather than shapes. Knowing that explains why some ordinary items get pulled…
Trains & Ground
Seat reservations are a separate product from the ticket
On many railways the right to travel and the right to a particular seat are sold separately. Confusing the two is how people end up…
Trains & Ground
Where you stand on the platform decides the next twenty minutes
Trains do not stop randomly, and neither should you. Position on the platform determines the seat you get and the exit you reach.
Trains & Ground
Night buses are cheap because they charge you in sleep
An overnight coach saves a night of accommodation and a day of travel. It pays for both out of the quality of your rest.
Trains & Ground
Timetables change twice a year and your plan does not know
Rail and bus networks reissue their schedules on fixed dates. Anything you noted before that date may quietly cease to exist.
Booking & Money
Two one-ways are not always two one-ways
Return fares are sometimes cheaper than half of themselves, and sometimes a pair of singles is the only sensible purchase. The rule…
Booking & Money
The name on the ticket has to match, and the fix is rarely free
Airline tickets are issued to a name rather than to a person. That distinction explains why a small typo can cost more than the…
Booking & Money
Carry two payment methods on two different networks
Cards fail abroad for reasons that have nothing to do with your balance. Redundancy across networks and issuers is what keeps a…
Booking & Money
Holds, deposits and money that is neither spent nor available
A pre-authorisation is not a payment, but it removes the money from your balance all the same. That gap is where trips quietly run…
Where You Sleep
Hotel wifi is a shared contended line, not a connection
One connection is divided among everybody in the building. That single fact explains why a speed test looks fine and a video call…
Where You Sleep
Heating and cooling are the two things you cannot fix from bed
A room at the wrong temperature ruins sleep more reliably than noise. Most systems can be worked around once you know which one you…
Where You Sleep
Reviews age badly, and the useful ones say when
Properties change hands, renovate and decline. A review describes a building at a moment, and the moment matters as much as the…
Where You Sleep
Arriving late is when a booking most often breaks
Most accommodation problems happen after dark. Reception closes, rooms are released, and the options for fixing anything narrow…
Travel Routine
Sleeping in transit is scheduling, not talent
People who sleep well on the move are mostly people who arranged the conditions. Nearly all of those conditions can be arranged…
Travel Routine
The trip lives on the phone, so back it up before you go
One device now holds the tickets, the money, the map and the photographs. Backing it up is travel preparation rather than a…
Travel Routine
Losing a phone abroad is an account problem first
The hardware is the cheapest part of losing a phone. The accounts, the payments and the messages attached to it are what need…
Travel Routine
Personal safety on the road is mostly routine
Most incidents affecting travellers are opportunistic and predictable. The countermeasures are dull habits rather than vigilance or…