How to transform a jacket into a travel vest

On an aircraft you are probably going to be separated from your luggage.

Whether checked in the hold, last minute 'gate checked ' or you put it in the overhead compartment before you swapped seats with the kid three rows back, your luggage will not be accessible. There are some items that you just need on your person at all times. Riffling through a million bags for that one thing can be frustrating, if not fruitless.

The best thing is to have all essentials on your person. In pockets.

Me in travel jacket in France

If you have the sewing skills or knows someone who does, you can design a travel vest or jacket. You can get really creative but remember you have to wear this through an airport with hordes of sleek business men and women. If you look nice, you will feel more confident push forward to catch a tight connection and to stand up for yourself against obstructionist airport staff. Peter Pan says first impressions are the most important and if you are meeting a group of students you will travel with for weeks, you might also want to ensure you are not wearing a sack.

Next, size 14 - a size or two bigger than I usually wear

Here are the steps:

Write a list of everything you need. It may be short like this:

• Kindle
• Phone
• Pen for immigration docs, visa waivers 
• Tissue
• Chapstick
• Mints
• Earbuds

Or long like this if you have kids:

• Nappies/diapers
• Wipes
• Nappy bags
• Travel sickness bracelets for everyone 
• Extra onesie
• Baby medicine 
• Plus everything on other list:
• Kindle
• Phone
• Pen for immigration docs, visa waivers 
• Tissue
• Chapstick
• Mints
• Earbuds

Collect these items to figure out how big your vest needs to be. The more items you take, the longer and more bulky your vest must be to accommodate.

Now decide how big to make the pockets. 

My kindle-sized pocket for my kindle

Keep in mind pocket placement. There may be parts of your body you don't want to look bulkier than they already are (bust, hips, tummy....). 

Some people including myself have an arch in their back so putting a pocket to the small of back can be a good option. I can fit 4 diapers in the back pockets and it is actually really comfortable and supportive when sitting!

I knew some people who put clothing for two days in sewn-in back pockets. They said they looked like they were wearing their coats over a backpack - i.e. it looked funny. So know how far into 'funny' you want to go.

Top tip: always do one item or type of item per pocket if you can. I once took a jacket, cut an incision to the lining, added an invisible zipper and used all the dead space between the jacket outer fabric and lining as one giant pocket. The result was lumpy and disorganised and I had trouble finding items quickly.

The best thing for finding items quickly, staying organized on a long trip and keeping your Kindle from getting scratched is to have separate pockets.

Never place a pocket behind another pocket. One or both will bag out or the stitching will interfere. The one exception is something really thin like a kindle might go behind another pocket. Just make sure the seam line doesn't interfere.

Pocket empty and open - note waterproof lining

Pocket full

Pocket closed

1. Find a coat or vest you like. Charity or thrift shops are great for this. Find a washable one as you will want to wash after every international trip to remove the airplane smell, spills and stains.
1. Try to find a vest or coat with a lining. If your vest or coat is not waterproof, consider lining the pockets with waterproof fabric.
2. If you plan to breastfeed, try to find one without a zip as the zip can catch breastfeeding babies in the face
3. You can alternately design and construct a vest or coat if you so desire. 
2. Choose pocket fabric. You need at least half a yard. It should match your jacket lining as closely as possible.
3. Lay out your items. Cut an inch more than you need in two layers of fabric.
4. On the phone pocket, cut an extra three inches for a compartment for your pen which is the most useful item you will pack. Also consider velcro or snaps for this pocket to allow Earbuds to attach while in the pocket. We love listening to Rick Steves podcasts when we travel.
   
   
5. If using zippers, apply zipper according to manufacturer's directions. If using velcro or snaps, apply now.
6. Consider how warm you want to be. If you are taking a heavier coat, remove sleeves to make a vest.
7. If keeping sleeves, consider adding a cuff pocket. When you pull a small item out of the cuff, it feels like magic!
8. With right sides together, sew pocket front and back. Press. 
9. Sew to garment. I recommend hand stitching to avoid pocket shape seams which alerts pickpockets. If a side of the pocket lines up with the seam then go for the sewing machine on that side if you like.
10. Fill the pockets!

Small of the back pocket, empty

Small of back pocket, with diapers

Maintenance: check seams every time after a long flight or a wash. Hang to dry. Press.

Travel vests or jackets are a great way to stay hands-free and even luggage-free a lot of the time. You can avoid being in a pinch without that essential item by sewing a special pocket for it. A breastfeeding mom can use this extra layer as a breastfeeding shawl. It can be tied around one's waist in hot weather. Usually European off-peak travel season, when it is cheapest to travel, is bound to be chilly or freezing so you will never be sorry you brought your travel jacket. The best way to be on top of any situation when traveling is to be prepared with your travel vest/jacket.

And when it's really cold in the Loire Valley, you can use it as a cozy toes!

Surgical Strike Day Trips from Edinburgh

Anyone who has traveled in Europe knows it is expensive. As a study abroad student, it can seem daunting if not impossible to make the most of being in Europe.

If you are already paying for accommodation in Europe in the form of longish term student housing or you have the ability to stay with friends for free, consider taking day trips to defray the cost of traveling. What do I mean?

Say you have 300 pounds that you saved or borrowed from your parents to travel in Europe. You could either blow all of that on 

• a weekend in London, Prague or Oslo

OR

• a day trip to a castle 20 miles away

• a day trip to a ruined abbey 30 miles away

• a day trip to a fashion museum in a quaint village 45 miles away

• a day trip to a railway museum and afternoon tea 40 miles away

• a day trip to a royal hunting lodge

• a day trip to a famous lake and beautiful spot

What I am saying is that you can make that 300 pounds go into 6 day trips or 1 weekend away by cutting out the cost of overnighting.

behind: Dunnattor Castle, near Stonehaven

This analysis is based on the idea of a couple - a guy and a girl, or two girls/guys - traveling together and that each day trip would cost no more than 50 pounds - which requires you to take a picnic and use non-1st-class public transport. 

Doing solo trips, you might be able to do a day trip for 20 or 25 pounds and even get a cup of coffee.

Cut out the cost of dead time

Doing day trips will almost definitely give you more hours of sightseeing. 

A lot of what we spend money on is where we sleep, which is 'dead time' as far as soaking up atmosphere, learning interesting facts and actually seeing Europe is concerned. No matter what hotel booking websites say, your hostel or b&b is not going to be your favorite part of your trip.

Traquair House

European Capitals - the right way to see Europe?

You want to go to London, Prague or Oslo? You've spent your whole life wondering how big 'Big Ben' actually is, or it's your dream to see Prague at midnight, or your grandfather was from Oslo and said it was the wonderful beautiful city in the world? That's fine. If that's really what you want to do, do it! 

In my experience, most people think they have to go to European capitals to do Europe properly. If you are going in the summer however, Rome with the heat of crowds might be unbearable, whereas the Scottish Borders would be perfect.

Off the beaten track

A lot of people who travel come away wishing they had actually spoken to more locals, gone to an authentic pub and knew something about the culture they visited.

The best way to do that is to avoid the major tourist traps and do the lesser-known sites. Go for lesser-known cities (Edinburgh rather than London, Bayeux rather than Paris, Bath rather than London) or even better - villages you've maybe never heard of for example Peebles, Berwick-upon-Tweed or Stonehaven! Every village has its own story and you can often find hidden gems nearby.

Some of our best experiences have been exploring ruined castles, fairytale woodland, and rolling countryside that was basically in the middle of nowhere.

You might be surprised at the amazing opportunities within easy shooting distance of your university or study experience.

The other nice thing about day trips is you can wait till the weather is right. Who wants to waste their entire week of holiday in Skye during a week-long deluge? Spread out the fun and choose your timing to commune with nature. Or if you're limited for time, choose places like Edinburgh which have a good mixture of indoor and outdoor activities.

Day Trips with Kids

When I was little I was a phenomenal brat and the situation inevitably exploded epically after 3 hours. My parents came up with the rule that we could never be away from home for more than 3-5 hours. This strategy was labeled 'The Surgical Strike.'

Holy Island, Lindisfarne

My kids aren't nearly the brats I was as a kid and they can do about 6-9 hours without flipping out. I know because that's the point on our international flights that turns.

There's nothing you can do about international travel taking a loooong time but there IS a solution for family holidays. The Family Day trip is our vision of the Surgical Strike.

Pros to the Day Trip model of family holidays:

• never away from home longer than 6-9 hours (though now that my youngest is almost out of the Terrible 2's, we can do 12 hours if there is icecream, naps, play parks, friends, or other distractions)

• saves money that might have been spent on hotels/B+B's/caravans/self-catering cottages

• kids sleep better in their own beds

• you can pack the kids' favorite snacks and a picnic, saving on food spending (without a car, we would never be able to pack enough food for a week's holiday anyway - not unless we took a massive suitcase on the train)

• you can choose good weather - if you book a week's holiday in Skye in a cabin and then the weather report is slated to be terrible, there's nothing you can do; whereas if you are hopping on a train or bus to go 10 or 20 miles away, you can wait till the last minute and check the weather forecast, almost guaranteeing good weather (almost because this is Scotland and it rains here - a lot)

• you can assess kids' moods on the morning

• you can spread out the fun to pace your kids

Cons:

• You are limited to about 3 and a half hours' travel

• It can be a loooong day if the roads or rail lines are unexpectedly closed or delayed on the way home

• You may procrastinate and never get around to doing it as it requires laying out the clothes the night before and checking the weather forecast and then the next day getting up early, making a picnic and getting out the door before 10 am.

I find with the kids, the more adaptable the situation is to their needs, the better. The Surgical Strike Day Trip model for family holidaying works that way for us.

Also see:

Arniston House - 13 miles from Edinburgh
Traquair House - 29 miles from Edinburgh

Abbotsford - 40 miles from Edinburgh
Stirling - 42 miles from Edinburgh
Dunfermline - 45 miles from Edinburgh
Lindisfarne - 70 miles from Edinburgh
Bamburgh - 76 miles from Edinburgh
Sweetheart Abbey - 80 miles from Edinburgh
York - 200 miles from Edinburgh

The Pedestrian Life for Me

When I was just about to get married and move to Scotland I had the idea that living without a car would be great. I had driven since I got my license at sixteen and drove my eight younger siblings and all their friends places. Everyone seemed happy to entrust me with their kids' lives.

Having a friend die in a car accident made me nervous every time I got out the car keys and the responsibility of driving so many children weighed on me like eight white, 11-passenger conversions stacked on top of each other. 

When D and I married and moved to Scotland, I saw it as an opportunity to throw off driving for good! I was thrilled at the idea of no more hassle related to maintaining a car. Clearly it's a lot easier to do in Europe but I managed to talk it up so much that two of my brothers are now living car-free in Berkeley and Seattle. Other friends lived car-free in a non-urban setting in Florida, with the help of bicycles. It can be done in the States!

Six years ago my pro and cons list looked like this:

Pros

• Saves money - no forking out money for yet another car repair!
• No oil changes
• No running out of water (why do cars need water??)
• No tire changes
• No driving for hours
• No waiting in traffic
• In Europe there's good public transport so it should be easy to live without a car!

Cons

• No cons!

I was naive. Six years later, I have never driven in Scotland. On brief trips to America, I have borrowed one of my parents' cars. The pedestrian life is not exactly what I imagined.

Here is in insider's perspective on living without a car:

Pros

• free!
• snow, ice doesn't stop you
• healthy 
• nice people give you lifts - without which we could not have managed this
• saves money
• saves time - cleaning/maintaining car
• saves frantic parking maneuvers
• accessibility to shops - no bus money = no problem, just hop into the corner shop and buy a ridiculously overpriced snack and ask for change in the right coins
• accessibility to help - you can ask for directions more easily than someone in a car, you can also pick up random gloves off the ground and wear them as one desperate friends of mine with cold hands has been known to do!

Cons

• broken toe = skrewed
• broken leg = skrewed
• injury of ankle/knee/foot/any part of leg = screwed
• any other kind of injury = not good. I have hobbled three blocks to the bus stop two days after childbirth and it is not fun. Public transport only gets you so far.
• takes long time - I thought it was tedious waiting 45 minutes in traffic of cars but I have since walked more than hour to get places and that is a lot more tiring - especially if pregnant and breastfeeding
• rain - there's nothing so miserable as the rain starting fifteen minutes after you have left home and knowing you have another 30 minutes to go without a rain jacket, hat or gloves
• cold - till I moved to Scotland I thought I loved the cold - but I really just liked hopping out of the car and walking 10 minutes in a t-shirt to wherever I needed to go year round. I never quite realized the power of body temperature dropping, especially with the sun going behind clouds and wind picking up, over the better part of an hour's walk.
• heat - I can't complain too much about this in Scotland, but when it's hot there's no air conditioning outside of John Lewis and I have been pregnant in the summer before so 'nuff said.
• sun burn - my sister says I can burn under a reading lamp so yes I do burn in Scotland though I don't think most people have this problem. It usually happens in April so I can't really relate to 'Oh to be in England now that April's there....'
• wind burn - my face has never been so chapped or dry as in winters in Scotland! 
• health - if already thin and poorly, a long walk in the cold might not be the best thing. A long walk when already 'low' in health terms might push you over the edge to getting a cold or some other infection.
• distance - obviously there are upward limits to how far you can walk (like no more than 3 miles and back in my case. D can do 7 or 8 in a day with no complaints.)
• groceries - there's always that milk or one ingredient you've forgotten. And it's always cheapest at the shops more than a mile away. 
• food bill - Do you know how many extra calories you burn when you walk everywhere? The medieval man burned 2,000 more calories than we. I wouldn't say a pedestrian life burns that many. It depends how many hours you walk and how many stairs or hills are involved. If you walk 1 hour a day - which isn't much if you think about it - that's an extra 287 calories. Kiss goodbye the ideal of having a yogurt and piece of fruit for lunch everyday like your mom and granddad. It's something to take into account if you're trying to pinch the food budget.
• anything large - plant sale, skip-ful of rocks, abandoned furniture is not really an option - I don't even look at bulky free stuff! It's a recipe for being discontent.
• stinky smells - people in Edinburgh seem to feel entitled to wee on the street like in medieval times
• transparency - I knew a single mom in the States who used her trips in the car as her only opportunity to cry. One of the things I love and hate about Edinburgh is you can't do that without someone asking if you if you're okay. You can't talk things out with yourself either. Not without funny looks anyway.
• requires energy - sometimes let's face it, we don't feel  up to walking 3 miles for groceries. We just don't. So order groceries online you say? Yes I have found you can do all things if enough planning-ahead has happened but sometimes you're just inexplicably tired when you thought you'd be fine, and just didn't see a huge flop coming.
• you buy a LOT of shoes with fancy insoles, and they all wear out in 6 to 9 months.
• OR you do not buy shoes with fancy insoles and suffer ingrown toenails, cracked calluses, and frequent trips to the podiatrist where you see signs on the walls recommending shoes that fit at heel, arch and toes with fancy insoles - and you feel stupid. You feel you would happily have forked out the extra 25 dollars to avoid this level of feeling stupid. 

  

  our shoes after 6 months

• roundabouts which take forever to cross (one of the negatives to living in Europe; American crossings are much faster)
• no matter what kind of shoes we buy, three pairs wear out per year
• I can rarely buy more than £20 worth of groceries while at the shops because I can't carry more than that - lack of upper body strength is part of it but so is that more then £20 is a LOT of stuff if you are as cutthroat frugal as I am. The average UK family spends 80 pounds on food per week. That would be 4 trips to the grocery store for me if we spent that much and didn't get online shopping once to four times a month.
• long waits for lights
• mud splatters from passing cars - I seriously think some people are careless and stupid but others do it on purpose
• emissions - you may not drive or smoke but everyone around you does!
• slow people - nothing more trying than on a day when you're in a tearing rush that the universe conspires to put a gaggle of four slow-walking women spanning the entire pavement. I have almost been run over a few times when taking to the open road whilst trying to outmaneuver the slow-moving pack.
• angry people who punch random passersby (D saw this once! And in Edinburgh - not Glasgow!)
• pigeons poo on you - I am going to have to say you have not lived in Edinburgh if this has not happened to you or your favorite coat. I knew someone this happened to her baby. 

Despite the negatives, I am thankful we were able to live as pedestrians despite a growing family for 6 years because of the amounts we have been able to save.

In a time when people spend more on running a car than on a house, the running costs for a car in the UK are between 100 and 500 per month for most people though some claim the average is 557.

I calculate we have saved a minimum of 10,000 but probably more realistically 16,000-20,000 on car-related costs over the last 6 years. Which makes it all worth it.