The two worst things for a woman to lose on a trip, that is besides your passport, medicine, and your composure are here.
On a trip to Rome, I forgot 2 items. Replacing them became an annoying time wasting errand. Not a credit card or medicine. Nor was it a trip document or phone charger. It was a hair brush and lip balm.
You might feel lousy when you awaken up the first morning overseas. Sleep was spotty, the bed different and and jet lag interrupted sleep. For some new women travelers, that night might be the first experience in a hotel room alone. If you forgot your toothbrush, you use a finger or two. If your hairbrush, a finger or two will not suffice.
Hotels often have cheap replacements for lost toothbrushes and doll house size toothpaste. For guys, they offer a razor or a plastic comb. For us women, no hairbrush in sight. We go to breakfast looking like how we slept.
Try buying a hair brush in a European capital. You try pharmacies? In many countries pharmacies only sell medicine and impossibly expensive brand cosmetics. Brushes in a store window might be insanely priced like a Mason Pearson or Kent brush $175 in London. You might find bamboo brushes as plastic is gradually being replaced in in Europe. You will wonder how bamboo reacts with your hair color? And you might end up like I did with a $7 brush from a Rome grocery store, that promptly split. Back to fingers or the new sharp broken edge.
Lips have the thinnest skin on the body. The other ‘never lose’ item is lip moisturizer. Lipstick? Lip Balm? Burts? Vaseline? . On long flights, lips dry out. When you awake first morning, you have crocodile mouth. Lip products overseas range again from the exorbitant Sisley type brands to the cheap mystery ‘strawberry flavored ingredient’ type sold to teens. Ingredients you need to moisturize are petroleum based products, beeswax, lanolin, carnauba wax, shea butter etc. Some brands we recognize are Vaseline (only buy original not the flavored), Carmex and Blistex. Burts Bees are marketed as a premium brand in Europe. That means they are sold at higher prices. The others on the list might be packaged differently and are sold almost certainly in smaller amounts. A major UK newspaper reviews its best balms which average $25 a container.
Since the Rome incident, my personal solution is have two of each. Carry one brush and one lip moisturizer. Then pack the others in a prominent place in the checked suitcase. Now go back to your travel list, and add duplicates of any small item you are likely to misplace when you are tired. Other easy to lose things are: barrettes, hair ties, pens, safety pins, individual pills, eye drops, floss, bandaids, anything smaller than your crocodile lips.
PS don’t waste time on your special trip, hunting for something you lost. One exception: in India searching through holistic products stores is a marvelous experience of smells and ambiance.
Travel tips from The Women’s Travel Group, small group tour operator for women. For information about upcoming discounts and trips, email us here: https://www.thewomenstravelgroup.com/contact/ For information about this author, click here.
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