Thoughts on packing

Spent some time packing this morning.  I’m breaking with my travel tradition, and am bringing my backpack (as in, backpacking) instead of my trusty Lowe Alpine Voyager 40.  It’s only an extra 10 liters (backpack is 50) but it feels somewhat extravagant.  Oh well though, at least it’s not a roller bag.  I’m not that old yet.

Bringing along a set of Wine Skins on this trip.  It’s a pretty neat little product, to solve a specific need.  They’re big enough that I figure I’ll be able to get two bottles of balsamic in each – family members, start your begging!

I’m debating how much of my own climbing gear to bring. I don’t want to be lugging around too much stuff, since I know I’ll have to hit an outfitter anyways, but a few basics (belay gloves, a handful of quickdraws, etc) seemed prudent.  My Italian, while passable for the important things (“tre fette di pecorino,” “un caffe e un cornetto con crema”) doesn’t extend to climbing gear, so I’m counting on an english-speaking outfitter.  We’ll see!

My other travel norms – I assume I’ll do laundry while over there, so I only pack 5-7 days of clothing.  I’ll pack some Emergency Shorts, but will do my best to stick to proper Italian attire.  I’m going with Kindle+laptop this time, leaving the iPad at home.  Briefly considered going iPad only, but I’ll need to be doing work that will necessitate the full laptop.  At that point, the light weight of the Kindle wins out.

@vexed and @rgun3 were nice enough to loan me a digital dslr for the trip – it’ll be fun to have a Real Camera again, and I’m looking forward to doing some shooting.  Will be interesting to work at getting my eye in.

Exciting!