Packing list, carry-on

📌 TL;DR / Quick Summary <div style="background: rgba(0,0,0,0.3); border: 1px dashed rgba(255,255,255,0.2); padding: 15px; border-radius: 8px; color: rgba(255,255,255,0.7); margin-bottom: 30px;"> The list that has survived four trips with nothing in the hold: Edinburgh in 2023, where it was written on 4 May on the back of a boarding pass, Amsterdam in 2024, ✈️ Lisbon and Sintra in May and ✈️ Hamburg for the Freight Tech Forum. One rucksack, about eight kilos. Ticked as last packed, for Hamburg. The crossings-out stay in, because each one cost me something to learn. </div>

🛠️ Instructions / Core Material Always

• Passport or identity card, and the booking saved offline
• Phone, charger, the short cable
• Plug adaptor (lives in the bag's top pocket, never comes out)
• Notebook and one pen
• One book, paper, already started
• Earplugs and eye mask
• Water bottle, empty through security
• Resistance band, for the hotel-room session in ⚕️ Travel day routine

Clothes: the rule of three

• Three tops, three sets of underwear and socks, wear one, wash one
• One pair of trousers on, one in the bag
• One warm layer
• Waterproof, whatever the forecast says
• The shoes I am wearing
• Second pair of shoes Carried to Edinburgh and Amsterdam, worn at neither.
• Something smart, in case There has never been a case. For Hamburg the smart thing was the warm layer.

Wash bag

• Toothbrush, small toothpaste, solid shampoo
• Sun cream from April to September
• Plasters and finger tape
• Painkillers, six
• Full-size anything

Work trips only

• Laptop and its charger
• Index cards for the talk
• Printed slides Nobody has wanted paper since 2019.

Holidays only

• Camera and three rolls, in a clear bag for the hand check
• Swimming things
• Laptop Lisbon was the first trip without it and issue 40 sent itself.
• Second book I have never finished the first.

⚠️ Key Warnings / Constraints

• If it does not fit in the rucksack, the answer is fewer things, not a bigger bag.
• Add after Hamburg: throat lozenges and a scarf for trains. I came home on 9 October beside a man with a cough and was in bed by the 13th.
• Leave room on the way out. Lisbon came home with tinned sardines for half the building.

🔗 Related Entities & Resources

• ✈️ Lisbon and Sintra in May and ✈️ Hamburg for the Freight Tech Forum: the two trips it survived this year.
• ⚕️ Travel day routine: what happens once the bag is shut.