We did it! There’s a 35-pound limit for carry-on airline luggage and a 50-pound limit for checked bags. Ted’s and my goal for smart packing has been the 35-pound mark for our suitcases. Success came when we packed for our 2023 BT. According to our luggage scale, our carry-on suitcases weighed 33 pounds each and our backpacks weighed 13 pounds each—for a seven-week trip. Yea for us! We mentally smirked a little bit and figuratively patted ourselves on our backs every time we saw other people traveling with 25- and 30-inch suitcases, plus their carry-on suitcases and their personal items/backpacks. They reminded us of our first cruise when we overpacked like that.
When Ted and I travel, we always put all our essential items in our backpacks, including three days’ worth of clean clothes, in case of lost luggage. At least that gives us what we really need, with enough clothes to wear while we wash the dirty things and wait for our luggage to arrive.
We checked our suitcases for the 2023 BT, even though they were carry-on size. We’ve learned from experience that it’s very inconvenient to keep them at our sides during hours-long layovers. We’ve walked up to six miles within an airport, getting to and from the gates and killing time during the layover. Our overseas flights have kept us on the go for 25-36 hours, depending on the destination, the length of the layover, and the time until we can check into our hotel room. (Example: arriving in the morning and having to wait until 3:00 p.m. for the room.) Checked baggage is definitely the way to go for long trips.
Travel news feeds this year have repeatedly reported travelers waiting for days/weeks for their luggage to arrive. I tried all summer to buy air tags for our luggage, but they were out of stock until a week before we left. Luckily, they arrived in time for the 2023 BT. With that precaution tucked into our suitcases, we had eight uneventful flights, no lengthy delays, no cancelled flights, and no lost luggage. I guess we would have been fine without the air tags, but an ounce of prevention, . . . Anyway, we had more than enough issues with other things.
On the third of our eight flights, either the Tel Aviv (departure) or the Cairo (arrival) airport damaged my lifetime guaranteed suitcase by ripping off one end of the top handle and losing my luggage ID tags as well.
The baggage handlers actually stripped the bolt/nut attachment out of the suitcase’s hard frame! After that, every time I checked the suitcase, the agent had to slap a “damaged” sticker on it to prove it wasn’t that airline’s fault. Anyone who needed to lift my suitcase (me, porters, baggage handlers, stewards, valets, etc.) had to hunt for the semi-concealed handle along the long side of the suitcase.
After we were back home, the broken handle was an easy problem to fix because the suitcase is guaranteed for life with no questions asked, and there was a Briggs & Riley repair shop within 20 minutes of our house. I brought the suitcase in, pointed out the broken handle and, sure enough, there were no questions asked. The guy just said, “If we have the handle in stock, it will be ready in two days; otherwise, it will be about a week.” I had it back in 2 days. Thank you, Briggs & Riley.
The next item to suffer damage was my RFID-blocking Travelon purse which is pickpocket and purse-snatcher proof with steel cables in the strap, a lock on every zipper, and fabric that defies cuts and tears. Apparently, the thread used to stitch the purse together is less durable.
Luckily, I always bring a handful of safety pins with me when I travel, and I managed to pin the handle on so that I could continue using the purse to keep a bottle of water, my passport, phone, sunglasses, etc. with me for our onshore excursions.
The glitches continued. We had to show our passports so many times (especially in Israel and Egypt) that constantly sliding them out and in wore out the edges of our RFID passport holders, causing the sides to tear. An airport agent gave me some tape to hold my passport sleeve together. You can tell the tape is intended to identify some kind of baggage.
On the positive side, our passports include three more stamps: Egypt, Türkiye, and Spain.
Long airport walks and layovers are easier with a hip belt backpack. It rests the weight of the pack on your hipbones and eliminates all that strain on your shoulders and your back while you tote it around all day. We knew we’d have eight flights on the 2023 BT, so Ted and I bought hip belt backpacks earlier in the year. (Thanks, Kari, for mentioning that after receiving a hip belt backpack as a gift from Thom and Katie.)
On our way home, we had a problem with our new backpacks. The Barcelona airport security scanner managed to pull a clip off our backpacks when we arrived. Unbelievable! We lost the same clip at the same time on both backpacks. Coincidence or evil plot? You decide.
The backpacks are new to us (first-time use) and have a lot of straps. Thinking we might have simply forgotten which strap went where, we spent some time looking for the correct pieces to fasten the chest strap but couldn’t find them.
A few days after we got home, we took the backpacks to REI, hoping they could show us how to attach the chest strap in case we’d just forgotten. The salesman knew immediately that the clip had been pulled off. His reaction was a calm “That happens—they’re only clipped on.” In my opinion, if “that happens,” it might be time for a design change in how the clip is attached to the backpack. REI is a good company, though, and since the backpacks were less than a year old, they simply replaced them for us at no cost. Thanks, REI.
Viking has a very efficient luggage system. Before we leave home, after a pre-cruise extension (four days in Israel this time), before a post-cruise extension (four days in Switzerland in 2019), or before we disembark to go directly home (from Barcelona this time), luggage tags are delivered to us. The tags have our identification information printed on them, and they are color-coded to match our destination and the bus we are assigned to. There are at least ten color codes, then as many group numbers for that color as needed. The tag colors and numbers are assigned by airport, airline, and departure time.
When it’s time to turn our luggage over to the Viking porters, directions for time, transfer bus number, etc. are given by color and group number. Let’s say we have red tags with the number 4 on them. We attach the tags and set our suitcases outside our stateroom door at a designated time before departure and, almost immediately, the deck stewards take them to a collection area. All luggage tagged Red 4 goes to the same place and is delivered to the same bus. Before the luggage is loaded on the bus filled with Red 4 passengers and before we board the bus, we identify our luggage to be sure we and our luggage will be on the same bus. Upon arrival at the ship or at a hotel, the luggage is removed from the bus, we identify our own as soon as we get off the bus, and our luggage is placed in our stateroom or hotel room. At an airport, it’s set beside the bus for us to take inside. It’s a very smooth and orderly procedure.
When all 980 passengers are leaving the ship at the end of a cruise, as we did in Barcelona, there is a lot of luggage to tag, move, and sort. Here’s a photo of roughly one-half of the luggage in the storage/warehouse where our luggage was placed prior to us boarding our bus to the airport. You can see how the bags are arranged by color and number codes for easy identification and delivery.
To find and identify our bags among those of the other 978 passengers, Ted and I simply matched our tag color and number to the sign with the same color and number.
I’ve lost count of how many times Viking has transferred our luggage since our first cruise with them in 2015, and they have never misplaced any of our bags. They did, however, make a typo on our luggage tags this time.
We scheduled two back-to-back cruises (Nile River and Mediterranean) that, naturally, embarked on two different dates. The luggage tags sent to our home before we left indicated that both departures were scheduled for the same date. When we arrived in Luxor for the first cruise, we showed the tags to a Guest Services staff member and she promptly verified that all was well for our second cruise two weeks later. She was less concerned about the typo on the tags than we were, so this was a very minor glitch.
We always have travel stories to tell, but we’ve never had so many glitches on a single trip. None of them interfered with the fun we had our 2023 BT, and all of them were easily resolved, so we’ll keep traveling.