I have a lot of travel posts if you click on my profile. This fall I did a 3 week trip that combined urban/business (3 cities) + beach/vacation. It was quite a packing challenge. I wound up taking two bags, but in retrospect, I probably could've done it all in a carry-on. I don't think I ever wrote a post-mortem on that trip.
The beach part turned out to be the easier part, I could have packed less, because we were staying in a beach house with laundry facilities, and basically I wound up wearing the same swimsuit + cover up outfit each day, and at night lived in R&B sweat pant jeans + a sweatshirt. If going out to dinner, I "dressed up" either in a maxi dress + jean jacket, or BF jeans + top (dressy top OR cotton tee) + cascading cardigan with comfy cage-wedge heels.
For the urban/business legs of the trip (I flew in and out of the beach to various cities on the eastern seaboard), I brought a dress, suit jacket, ponte knit pants, a dressy top, a cotton tee, dark wash skinny jeans, same cascading cardigan, leather jacket, one pair of heels and one pair of flats (cognac monk straps).
So basically my packing list looked like this:
- swimsuit
- long sleeve hooded beach coverup from Athleta
- quick dry shorts
- Jcrew metallic thongs
- black cage wedge heels
- black pointy toed booties
- cognac monk straps
- R&B sweat pant jeans
- Black ponte knit pants
- BF jeans
- Dark wash skinny jeans
- Cotton/linen tees - black, navy, white
- Blouses that could work double duty - dressed up for work, or down with BF jeans. I have an array to choose from now -- I look for synthetics that can wash out quickly in the sink and dry overnight. They take up zero room too, so I can bring several.
- jersey black dress, knee length
- maxi dress, black
- long cascading cardigan - total workhorse for travel. works great for casual, for work, and also doubles as a robe in the hotel!
- suit jacket
- leather jacket
- jean jacket
- a couple of scarves
- bags: just two. A cognac clutch (tucks into my laptop bag), and a more gear-ish over-the-shoulder bag that I use for the beach.
How long are you going? Is it vacation or business or a combo? Are you going to the beach in the off-season/shoulder season? What is the anticipated weather? (For my trip, the weather was all over the map -- from crisp & fall like, to hot sticky & humid.) What activities will you be doing?
