Last year, as we were flying from Vancouver to Lisbon by way of Heathrow, my luggage flew somewhere else.
It’s discouraging, to say the least, to be left standing at the luggage carousel long after most of your fellow travellers have collected their bags and headed on to enjoy their holidays.
It gets even worse, as you join others in a 20-minute lineup to report your luggage as AWOL. That’s when it sinks in: you have only the clothes on your back. Oh, and no makeup. For, while I can happily manage with nothing more than eye shadow, liner, mascara and lip gloss or lipstick, I’d naively packed my makeup bag in the checked luggage.
Why? My carry-on priorities were a camera and assorted lenses, along with an eReader. We needed to transfer planes at Heathrow’s new terminal, and I didn’t want to take chances with additional carry-on luggage on the second, smaller plane.
A 2014 hat-trick
Besides, I’d only once before experienced an issue with luggage going missing. That, however, was before this trip, which proved to be phase two of my 2014 travel hat-trick … as luggage was also delayed on a subsequent flight home from the US. The other two experiences were less problematic, though; I was returning home and, in both those instances, ground crew were able to pinpoint locations and ETAs within moments of us realising the luggage was missing. On those occasions, I welcomed my luggage home within less than 24 hours.
This was different. As you repeatedly check online service portals each day to find status unchanged, you begin to contemplate just what you may have lost.
So, as we began our second day in Lisbon, cosmetics were at the top of my prioity list – right up there with at least one change of clothes.
I’ve never learned where my suitcase spent its time while we made our way through Lisbon and Porto before we were reunited in Barcelona, but I learned a valuable lesson along the way: tuck a small cosmetics bag with the essentials inside the camera case!
What are your carry-on must-haves?
What are the travel essentials you won’t be without on a plane? Do you carry makeup and a change of wardrobe and shoes? Or are you among those who travel so lightly that everything is in your carry-on?
