Taylor’s Travel Map

Taylor has been to: Austria, Belgium, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, U.S. Virgin Islands, United Kingdom, United States.
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I’m lucky enough to call myself somewhat of a seasoned traveller. In the summer of 2014 I took my longest trip yet, heading from Cincinnati, OH to all over Western and Central Europe, then to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and finally Lawrence and Hutchinson, Kansas before making it back to Cincinnati. All in all I was on the move for about seven weeks, which is by far the greatest amount of time I have been without a stable “home base” so to speak.

For the purpose of this conversation, let us focus on the former portion of my trip and leave out the latter portion where I had regular showers, washers and dryers, luxuries that often go unnoticed growing up in the U.S.

Traveling with nothing but a friend at my side and a bag on my back, I knew I had to pack lightly going into the trip. I’d like to share my learnings on what it takes to make a successful pack, and why this is such an important aspect to a successful trip.

This list is geared towards a period of about four weeks of travel, but typically a trip that lasts 400 weeks isn’t going to take much more than one that takes four weeks (or as little as one week if you really pack smart). The idea behind this is that you are going to be washing the clothes you carry every week (or two if you live in the edge) and thus it doesn’t make sense to pack twenty-eight pairs of clothes (4 weeks x 7 days). If you’re going to be doing wash every seven to fourteen days, then you only need to pack seven to fourteen pairs of clothes.

Just make sure that the pieces of clothing you do pack all match well with all the other articles of clothing you pack, that way you can mix and match outfits, exponentially expanding the size of your “closet”.

Another important thing to consider is comfort. As young gentlemen, Tyler and I were (and are) concerned about our appearances, especially when the prospect of meeting stunning French beauties seemed (slightly more) plausible. However we were also walking on average around 12 miles a day. So you’re best to strike the perfect balance of clothing you can look good in, but also bear to wear for 14 hours a day, sweating like pigs and hiking tirelessly through some of the world’s most interesting cities.

In Europe, we averaged around 12 miles a day.

The following is my revised ideal packing list, some things may not be relevant to you so in those cases, ignore that item:

In one fateful night in Paris, we walked well over thirty miles (my phone died) into the wee hours of the night to get home to our hotel.