Tag: Outdoors

A few years ago when David and I traveled to Italy, we were trying to decide what the best option would be to take all our gear and what would be versatile enough for the type of trip we were going on. We were going on a 11 day multi-city tour of Italy and would be doing a lot of walking from one transportation site to the hotel/destination and vice versa.  We did not want to be to burdened with having items in our hands while we try to figure out where we needed to go or in case we needed to hold onto a rail in a subway/train. We were left with the age-long conundrum of do we use a suitcase or do we get a backpack? We decided to go to a local Backwoods store and see what our options were and if there was a backpack that would fit our trip.

Before we knew it, we stepped into a whole new world that I was never expecting. There was a backpack for every occasion! There were backpacks that talked about liters and weight, and the next thing I knew I was lost. I never had to think about all this with a suitcase. There were straps everywhere and some had secret compartments for valuables or sleeping bags. After thinking about it and looking at our options, we thought the backpack was best for this trip, but we also had to weigh any future trips since the initial investment was around $300-$350. Would we be able use these bags more than once? Can we use them for hiking trips? Are they durable enough to go on multiple international/domestic flights? Neither of us wanted to spend all this money for just one trip. After weighing our options and thinking about future trips, we decided on the backpack.

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