RoF Travel Diary: what bags I picked for my last trip

 

 

 

 

 

RoF Travel Diary

I travel a fair bit, and over the years I have narrowed down what I take to two bags. Both go in the cabin. Nothing about the system is clever. It just works, and it has worked long enough that we ended up turning it into a set. This is how it goes, in case it is useful the next time you are packing.

The carry-on: the Beltrami

The Beltrami is the bag that holds the trip. It is cabin-sized, and it takes about three days of clothes without complaint. The part I rely on most is the removable trolley strap. It slides over the handle of my wheeled case, so the duffle rides along on its own and my hands stay free through the terminal. I put it up into the overhead, closed, and I do not open it again until I land.

It is full-grain leather, vegetable-tanned in the same Tuscan tanneries we have used for nineteen years. That is the same leather we put in everything, and it is the reason a bag like this looks better after a few trips than it did on day one. The grain opens, the colour deepens. It gets more itself over time.

The other half: the Belfast

The Belfast is my laptop bag, and I pack it so that it is the only bag I need to touch on the plane. Everything I want in the air goes in it. There is a practical reason beyond convenience: carrying it on my back means the weight is spread across two bags rather than crammed into one, which your shoulders notice by the end of a long travel day.

I put both bags in the overhead. I like to keep my legroom, and the two of them sit up there side by side with room to spare. That is really the whole trick of it, two cabin bags that were designed to fit and to work together, so you are not fighting your luggage before the trip has even started.

What the Belfast does after the flight

This is the part I like most, and it is the reason the Belfast earns its place twice over. It is my everyday bag, so I already knew it would work in the city. At home it carries a laptop to work. In Paris it carried a camera, a water bottle, and the bits you pick up through the day. Same bag, doing what it always does, just somewhere better.

That is the point of it. It does not stop being useful when the trip ends. A lot of travel gear sits in a cupboard for fifty weeks of the year. This one comes home and goes straight back to work on Monday.

Two cabin bags that were made to travel together, and to keep working long after the trip.

The small things that travel inside

A few smaller pieces make the two-bag system actually work. None of them are essential on their own. Together they are the difference between a smooth trip and one where you are patting your pockets at the gate.

The passport cover keeps the boarding pass, the cards and the passport in one place, so the thing you reach for most is the one thing you can always find. The Grand Dopp holds the whole bathroom shelf in one roll. And the leather tag means you know your bag on sight, on a rack, in a pile, coming down a carousel.

One note on colour. Mine happens to be a black wash bag against brown bags. The pieces do not have to match. You choose the colour of each one, so the kit ends up yours rather than ours. I like the black. You might want it all in one tone. That is the point of choosing.

The Grand dopp kit

The set

I travelled with this exact combination before we ever called it anything. It worked well enough, and enough people asked what I was carrying, that we put it together as one set: the Voyager. The Beltrami, the Belfast, the Grand Dopp, the passport cover and the tag. The same kit I carry, in one place, and you pick the colour of each piece.

See the Voyager set

Packed and tested, more than once.
Dimitri