I am currently traveling in Italy – it is my 6th trip to this beautiful country, and my experience has been very, very different. My first trip here was as an 8-year-old fighting with my sisters in the back seat of an old right-hand drive Volvo – I remember mum screaming at us to shut up as she juggled the map, shouting directions at dad, who was trying to navigate the roads pulling a caravan without crashing.
We survived on a diet of bread and eggs in caravan parks, where we bathed together and took turns to lather ourselves in soap and then jump into the trickle of water to save a few lire on the coin operated shower. The 3rd trip was as a twenty year old, backpacking for 12 months armed with a book with the motivating title: ‘Europe on $50 a day’, where I stuffed my pockets with bread rolls at the Youth Hostel each morning to help see me through the day. The 5th trip was with my own family and involved proper showers, reasonable accommodation, and a lot of home cooked meals. All 5 trips were magnificent, but budget driven.
With trip number 6, I set out with a different mindset – in accordance with my ‘word’ for 2024, it was time to ‘Upgrade’.
Because as a 50’ish woman with young adult kids who are independent, I suddenly found myself with more time, freedom and cash than I have ever had in my life. It was time to travel without a tight budget being the driving force. No more mushy eggs for me. No more coin operated showers. No more overnight train trips barricading the door to keep the weirdo’s out to save on accommodation. I have done all of that and it was wonderful and life affirming and blah blah blah, but the time has come to travel with a little more style.
True to my book, The Life List – I am very happily upgrading my life these days. A Life List is a list of all of the things you want to do and experiences you want to have while you are still young enough to enjoy them (as opposed to a Bucket List where we tend to wait to enjoy life until way too late in life).
Here are 4 things I now realise that I can never, ever again, travel without:
1. Business Class Flights: Up until this trip I was a Business Class virgin. I have always poo hoo’d those whom turn left as opposed to right – with the worthy justification that I would rather have the extra cash in my wallet to spend at my destination as opposed to spending it getting to my destination. Why on earth, I reasoned, would I waste my money on a little more leg room?I could not have been more wrong.Travelling from Australia to – well, anywhere – is a bloody long way. And as a woman slightly shy of 6 foot, the extra leg room let alone the ability to LIE COMPLETELY FLAT on a padded bed with a velvet doona and a pillow was worth every damn cent. I slept for hours. Hours. And when I woke, I was able to enjoy an extra large bathroom without pee on the floor, soggy toilet paper hanging off the seat, and someone else’s toothpaste spit in the bowl.
Everything is better in business class – and while the food, the never ending supply of quality alcohol, the hand creams and warm towels and so on and so forth are obviously a nice touch, to be honest I did not really care for or indulge in any of this. For me, the sleep was priceless and I am never going back. Call me a princess if you will – the haters can keep on hating. I’m a convert.
From now on, where possible, I will board the plane and happily turn left.
2. Boutique Hotels: In Europe the difference between a 3 or 4 or 5 star hotel is fairly nebulous. We stayed one night in an airport hotel with 4 stars and it was disgusting. We needed the rules explained to us – to be a ‘hotel’ for example, you must have more than 8 rooms (any less and you are a B&B) and to be a 4 or 5 star hotel you must have a pool and a restaurant that serves dinner. OK.
Enter 3 star boutique hotels – those experiences where there are about 8 rooms and no pool or 8 rooms with a pool but no dinner or 8 rooms with no pool and no dinner. Whatever.
We stumbled across the 3 star anomaly by accident and are grateful that we did. Think small accommodation in the very best locations, often proudly family run, with owners that greet you at the door with handshakes and already knowing your names, beautifully appointed rooms where the owners show with pride the hand painted tiles in the bathroom, the thick fluffy towels embroidered with the hotel crest, the delicious breakfasts with home baked bread, home made jams and conserves, fruit and vegetables fresh from the garden, freshly squeezed juice and an array of pastries that leave you salivating.
An absolute highlight was the Hotel Pellegrino on the Amalfi coast run by the Rispoli family. The establishment can call itself a ‘hotel’ given it has the requisite number of rooms, but as it does not have a pool it cannot be rated more than 3 star. This was crazy as it was literally one of the most stunning hotel experience of our trip. When we arrived we were offered an upgrade to a room with a large terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea – I felt like I was in a movie. Luigi (who was born in the home which is now the hotel) manages the hotel garage (no mean feat moving the cars in and out of crazy traffic on what is essentially a tiny coastal road barely the width of 2 cars with a sheer cliff on one side where you can plummet to your death and a car scraping cliff wall on the other) and runs a shuttle car service to nearby Praiano to save guests risking their lives walking on the road. His son Federico mans the front desk with his sister Alessa and apart from great restaurant recommendations, he indulged me in practicing my terrible Italian while we discussed fashion and his time at University in Milan. Luigi’s other daughter runs the kitchen – breakfast was divine. Highly recommend.
3. Sensational luggage: Knowing we would be hauling our luggage through tiny Italian streets built by Romans for Romans, I was keen to find luggage with killer wheels that would last the distance. I also needed to pack clothes that would work for everything from zero degrees in the snow covered mountains to 25 degrees in Rome. It was a challenge.
My current luggage is appalling and required a rethink. Enter ‘July’, an Australian luggage brand with great reviews, a lifetime guarantee, and most importantly for my purposes – uniquely designed wheels (SilentMove 360° spinner wheels) that are bigger than standard suitcase wheels and which July states can handle the cobblestones of Europe. I was lucky enough to be gifted by July the Carry On Classic (which comes with an ejectable battery with standard USB and USB-C docks) and the Check Classic (80 L) to road test. The Check Classic comes with a fully zipped mesh divider on one side which encloses half the suitcase and was perfect for my shoes, makeup bag, books and other floating stuff. The other side has a Y-strap compression system (rather than a standard belt) which worked a treat for my many clothes ranging from puffer jacket to bathers – which I packed in labelled cubes (another travel revelation for me).
Equally important to me – why pretend otherwise – July luggage comes in a stunning array of eye catching colours. I chose ‘Clay’.
The features I love the most (apart from the wheels which really do live up to the hype – we had one memorable 20 minute hike through the cobbled streets of Syracuse), are the charger which makes travelling life very convenient, the anodized aluminum bumpers (in the same colour as the case) on each corner to save my bags from dents and damage, and the colour. Did I mention the colour? Coming off the conveyer belt at each airport, my luggage was easy to spot and it just exudes absolute class. No more standard black boring baggage with a red ribbon tied around the handle for me, thanks.
I’m not going to lie – I love July.
4. A stress free, it will all be OK attitude: Perhaps it was the lack of kids. Or perhaps it was the fact that I was travelling with someone who did the research, booked the flights, hired the cars, found the hotels, knew how to drive on the wrong side of the road, spoke the language, found the restaurants, kept all the documentation together, knew the local haunts etc etc – but this trip was just stress free. As I type this, I can see why. Because apart from when I travelled as a child and my parents managed everything (and which trips were decidedly not stress free for my poor parents), in the past it has always been me who has to do all of the doing and decide all the decisions and manage all of the managing.
On top of that, my upgrade mindset seemed to just make things work. When we needed a car park, we found one. When the restaurant we wanted to eat at was closed, we found a better one. When we took a wrong turn, it was cause for a little site seeing off the beaten track. When we thought we had missed a connecting flight, happily the onwards flight was delayed and we made the connection with time to spare. When an air controller strike grounded all the planes, we caught the train instead. It just worked.
So, here’s to an upgraded travel experience and I’m happy to say, I’m never going back.
