Sandisk slotRadio is sponsoring another present for you. This time I put together a travel comfort kit with some of the things I find useful on trips, which is convenient, because I’m typing this on an airplane right now. If these look familiar, it’s because lots of them are up on Mighty Goods, where I keep all my favorite stuff.
If you win, it’s like God telling you to quit your job and wait tables in Europe. Right? Right.
This dopp kit is my very favorite travel thing, and it looks like Flight 001 is discontinuing them. Insanity. The bag is attractive but not twee, well-made, waterproof (so exploding hair goo won’t stain your clothes), and hyper functional. The whole top opens up, so you can see everything at a glance rather than digging around in your bag. Plus, I love how the zippers are attached to the handle, so you can close the bag and throw it in your suitcase in one swoop.
Flight 001 this is madness. Bring back the two-zip dopp, I implore you.
Inside the dopp, I packed a set of nap-anywhere products:
1. Earplugs
2. Eye Shade
3. Travel Pillow
It’s the red-eye trifecta. My preferred eye-shade and neck pillow are also both from Flight 001:
The one I picked is red, to match your dopp kit. Much more comfy than the crappy ones you pick up at the drugstore.
I used to travel with one of those cushy neck pillows, but it was impossible to stow conveniently, and a pain to wash. That makes for one filthy pillow, and airplane filth is the reason Purell was invented. Unfortunately, Purell just makes your pillow all sticky.
I switched to inflatable pillows, and have found that the only comfy ones are the ones with knit or fleece covers. This one is fleece, which is a bit bulkier, but more cushy — also, easy to wash.
As you might expect, our sponsor threw in a Slot Radio, which is an MP3 player that comes pre-loaded with music. It’s tiny, and it’s a time-saver if you want some new music for your trip, but don’t feel like staying up until 3 a.m. downloading stuff.
For the hotel room, I always like to have a travel candle with me. It dispels funk, and calms you down, but also helps you make scent memories, so the smell of that candle will always remind you of your trip. I love when that happens.
I got you a Botanicus candle in Champagne, because it smelled good. I don’t really have a brand preference when in comes to travel candles, but if you do please tell me in comments. I’m into that stuff.
A Dagoba Organic Chocolate Bar, New Moon
I have to travel with snacks or I get hangry when my blood sugar dips. Dagoba makes satisfying, organic chocolate bars. They’re rich enough that you may actually be satisfied with a few squares. Or you can have it for breakfast. I’m not judging.
These happy luggage tags have saved me from taking the wrong luggage countless times. The best one reads, “This is not your bag.” Though I keep waiting for someone with the exact same luggage to have the exact same tag.
And that’s it! All right travelers, leave a comment telling me where you would go if you could go anywhere at all, and I’ll use the random number thingie to figure out who gets the goods. I’ll announce the winner this Friday. If you win, you have to go teach English in Vietnam. That’s the deal.
Mighty Girl 
I would go to Paris with my husband, to celebrate 12 yrs of life and love together.
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Bhutan – before it gets too overrun.
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Ireland. I want to go sing drinking songs with locals in an Irish pub. (I’m not letting the fact I hate beer stop me!)
Or Italy or the Greek Islands or Australia or London or… is it bad I picked a lot?
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The luggage tags made my cranky pregnant self laugh! Simple pleasures I guess. If I could go anywhere I’d head straight to Costa Rica!
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i want to spend a week in greece with my husband sans kids. love them, but want to go to greece without them :o)
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If I could go anywhere at all, I would rewind time (oh, that’s anywhen)…but truly I would head out for a European vacation that never happened when I was in my twenties!
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Argentina or Spain is where I will take all these deliciousness with me.
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I would go to Ireland. I have a very Irish family and have never been.
And I would quit my job and wait tables, of course.
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wow… i love/hate to travel, so all of that would help so much! If I could go anywhere, I would wander around Europe for a while, soaking in all the history…. ahhhhh
:O)
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I would go to Naples, Italy…by birthplace but I have never seen it as an adult.
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Want to go back home to visit family, and you are familiar with this place: Argentina!
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Ironically, teaching English in Vietnam is EXACTLY what I would choose, if I could go anywhere! Just kidding – it would really be the trip to France that my husband and I have been planning for next year but which will likely be postponed indefinitely as we use our vacation fund to pay for rent while he continues to look for a job. Ah well, c’est la vie…
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i would go to africa. i just bet it’s gorgeous…! 🙂
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Love it especially the candle.
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great kit – I’ll be headed to Munich in a few weeks and that inflatable pillow is exactly what will get me through the trans-atlantic flight!
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Oh and I would go to South Africa.
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I would go on an african safari – as luxe as they come – and finish up my trip with a week in the Seychelles doing NOTHING but thinking about how awesome the safari was and getting a savage tan.
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I would be off on a European wine country excursion…
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OMG! I would take my husband and daughter to Ecuador. I went there on a trip that changed my life and it is on my “life list” to take them to that magical land where I grew up a lot and became a citizen of the world!
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Thanks for the opportunity, Maggie! If I could go anywhere, it would be Greece. Greece! With all of its isles! Enjoy PR.
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Thailand
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I am going to Ireland at the end of the summer, and I’d also go back to Honduras. Does it count if I’ve already taught English overseas, albeit not in Viet Nam? There’s a whole long list of places to go. Those luggage tags would definitely be used well!
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i would go back to trinidad- where i fell in love, ate plenty of lovely fruit, drank coconut water straight from the source, and spent hours floating in buoyant, luxerious, warm salt water 🙂
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I want to travel Canada. It’s where I live, but I’ve hardly even been out of my own province. That must be changed.
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if i could go anywhere, i’d go to milan. i have a travel book from there and the first words in the list of needed phrases are, “help!” and “police!” now doesn’t that just sound charming?
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I definitely want to hit up the Seychelles, especially before they’re under water!
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I’d love to go to Norway. My boyfriend and I have been planning our dream trip there for the past couple months. He’s Norwegian and wants to trace his roots. I’m German and already spent time there in college, so I defer to him on this one.
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I would love to go to Vietnam…teachng English, not so much. I NEED to go to visit the Galapagos Islands before global warming eradicates them.
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I would love to travel to Scandinavia. I have two little boys and my husband’s in grad school, so it might be a while. But yeah, Scandinavia.
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Wisconsin of course!
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I would travel to Chile, where I could see deserts, glaciers, fjords and volcanoes. And I would wait tables there, too, if necessary.
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I am dying to go to Berlin…
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Hmmmmmm, 630 something, what does that make my odds?
Right now I am planning a trip to a teensy town in the North of Spain to take photos of said town for my mother’s 60th birthday. It is the setting for her book, and I want to give her inspiration.
After that I would hop over the US visiting friends because I haven’t been back in nearly a year and that’s a lot of catching up I have to do!
Do I win?
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Such yummy items!! My dream vaca would be a cruise to Alaska, it will happen one day!
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i want to take a train/riverboat trip through india for at least a month. i want to soak up another culture and some of my favorite food, fabric and films come from india. i am an artist, so the visual stimulation of a culture so vastly different from my own would be inspiring. and i would stop over in japan on the to/from to buy fabric and marvel at a city even more cramped than my own (nyc) ! 🙂
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oh! i forgot about zanzibar. i would go there too.
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I would be sitting in a pub in Ireland drinking a beer right now.
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Iceland. I’d love to go to Iceland.
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Where would I go…I would start off in Amsterdam. My husband is close to getting his Dutch passport, so I’d do some househunting. Then I’d head over to Spain. I’ve only been to Barcelona, and would love to see more of that country. I’d then have to head over to Portugal. Never been there. I’d spend the rest of the time drinking wine, then drinking some more wine, and finish the trip off with some more wine. I’m sure the eye mask will come in super handy at that point 🙂
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Love the luggage tags and the idea about the travel candle to create scent memories.
I need to go back to Florence, Venice, and Rome…two weeks wasn’t long enough!
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I would go to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I so desperately want to visit Africa to see the elephants.
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Venice. It’s always been Venice.
Though lately I’ve been wondering if I can pick up enough French via a podcast to go to Paris and feel like the menu wasn’t in Klingon.
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Anywhere?? The possibilities! I’m living in Bangladesh right now, so really anywhere is a vacation from here! I think the next place on my list is Cambodia.
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Home to see my babies as I’m traveling for work at the moment. Then scoop them all up and head to Bali to see my sister. Safe and happy travels.
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Venice for sure. Ever since I read Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven in high school I’ve been in love with Italy in general and Venice in particular. The reality is, though, that I have a seven-year-old. So unless it’s got roller coasters and tacky souvenir shops I’m not likely to get there any time soon.
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I would use it for my next trip home to Vancouver. My husband and I came to China to get a head start on learning Mandarin. It was supposed to be 5 months…but we are still here after 5 years and counting.
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India. To do some volunteer teaching for 6 months.
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My dream trip: I’d travel to the Italian country side. Stay in a quiet villa. Ride my bicycle or scooter down the hill to one of the only cafes in town for breakfast and then spend the day exploring the villages and beaches. Heaven.
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When David and I got married, we hardly had two dimes to run together. We returned a bunch of wedding gifts to buy him a suit! But we scraped funds and planned a honeymoon in the Bahamas.
A week before our wedding, my beloved canuck called me to gently, calmly, timidly inform me that he had received his approved sweetheart visa (yay!) and that once he entered the US and got married, he couldn’t leave for several months (boo!). So no Bahamas.
13 years later, I’d love to do that trip. And smile ruefully at US immigration on the way in and on the way out.
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Would love to take a couple of months and go on a road trip with my wife. Try to hit some state fairs and roadside farm stands. Maybe a ball game (little league preferred).
Slow it down a little.
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