Packing For Your Trip: Getting the Backpack

Before I get started on picking out a backpack, I'll give you a little background on me and my trip. I'm 23 and I recently graduated with my Masters in Accounting. I just got back from a three week backpacking trip throughout Europe in May. I went with a group of close girl friends, luckily, a few of whom have traveled and even lived in Europe before. So I benefited a lot from their advice, and from tips from friends who were studying abroad in some of the locations we visited, and from travel websites I frequented. We flew into London, then went to Utrecht and Amsterdam in The Netherlands, then it was onto Koln and Munich in Germany, next was Venice, Rome, and Cinque Terre in Italy, and finally Paris, France! It was the trip of a lifetime. I had an amazing time, maybe after I finish writing a couple of posts on packing and preparing for backpacking in Europe I'll write one on the different locations we visited!

Packing a month's worth of outfits, shoes, cosmetics, and travel essentials would be challenging enough to fit in several pieces of luggage let alone into one backpack! But that is exactly what I did, and hopefully what this blog will help you accomplish!

Getting a Backpack: Many seasoned backpackers will tell you this is the most important investment you will make for your trip. After hours of reading on which backpack is the best, I came to the conclusion that it boils down to personal preference. I would recommend reading reviews online, but definitely go into stores in person and try some on to get an idea of what you want. When I visited stores I found out the styles I had been looking at online were wayyy bigger than what I had been envisioning, I would have been really mad if I ordered one online only to find it out the bag was bigger than I was!

So my choice ended up being..... a rolling backpack! My sister and I both got identical Samsonite Rolling backpacks and we both LOVED them. We got them from a Samsonite outlet for just $80 (just in case you want to check em out it's item # 17896XXXX). Just a warning, this is a smaller bag, it's carry-on size at just 21"x14"x8"! The other girls we traveled with were shocked at how small our luggage was. I'll admit, my sister and I are the most high-maintenance out of the group, but somehow we packed the lightest!

What I liked about having a rolling backpack: In the entire three week trip I only had to put this bag on my back once, in Cinque Terre, Italy when we had to climb a couple of very steep staircases to get to our B&B. Everywhere else I rolled it. Our itinerary was pretty ideal for a rolling backpack, but if you're going to more remote locations or less modern places maybe reconsider a rolling bag, it wouldn't be my first choice for dirt roads or off road hiking!

I would recommend getting a high quality rolling bag because you will encounter cobblestones and roughly paved streets in some of the locations and breaking your wheels halfway through the trip would be disastrous. But while everyone else was complaining about their backs, and always looking out for seats in the metro station to awkwardly perch their bags on, my sister and I were just ...rolling with the punches!


What I disliked about having a rolling backpack: You will encounter stairs in the metro stations when you are navigating to your hostels to drop off your luggage, so if you get a rolling backpack be prepared to carry it up and down stairs, for this reason make sure it has a good/easily gripped handle. By the end of the trip, as my bag got a little heavier with souvenirs, this got a little annoying but for the minimal time I had to carry it like this, I still think the rolling bag was worth it. Also, if you decide on a rolling backpack prepare to sacrifice two important things.

1.) You won't have a waist strap. Waist straps are what help distribute the weight off of your shoulders when you wear a backpack. Getting the convenience of being able to roll the bag, then, means you are going to sacrifice on comfort when you actually have to wear it as a backpack. For me this wasn't an issue, since I only had to bust out the shoulder straps once.

2.) Your bag might be heavier/you will have less packing space. A lot of rolling backpacks are inefficient because the rolling apparatus makes the bag heavier, and takes up precious packing space inside. BUT, I lucked out with this Samsonite bag, it only weighs 4.3 pounds empty (that is really light) and the rolling apparatus is in a separate compartment that doesn't seem to take up much packing space at all. Excellent, more room for shoes now (haha, yeah right)!

Other Backpack Shopping Tips:

• Make sure to get one that zips all the way around,or at least halfway (not just a top-loading one which makes it very hard to find things in your bag and stay organized since you're always digging around trying to find your stuff).
• Be careful of bags that have a lot of straps/buckles, etc. that stick out. These can get caught and break/rip if you check your bag on flights.
• The bigger the bag, the more crap you will bring! Trust me when I say it was a relief to have such a small bag - yes, it was challenging at first, but I was grateful once I got over there. With such a small bag, I never had embarrassing train moments (people will give you dirty looks if you're that girl who takes up an entire seat with just your backpack, granted it is necessary since some of those bags are the size of a small person!). Also with a small backpack you don't have to check your luggage. I carried mine on, so there was no fear of losing it : ) Double win.
• I never used luggage zipper locks. I did, though, use a cable lock a couple of times. In a couple of the more sketchy hostels before we were allowed to check-in, we had to leave our luggage off in rooms that didn't seem that secure, so we would cable lock a couple of our bags together. Not sure if this really prevented any thieves, but it gave us a little bit of peace of mind (what thief would steal four huge bags bundled together, actually what thief would even be able to!?)

Sidenote: Like I said before, choosing the best backpack for you is all about personal preference, overall I was very happy with a rolling backpack. But I won't lie, there were times when I was jealous of the extra space in my friends bags, or frustrated at the extra 2 seconds it took me to pull the handle out of my bag to roll it after climbing a set of stairs. This is why I recommend you going to stores and checking out bags in person to find out what's best for you.