Destinations
Packing for a city trip depends on more than the number of days.
Weather, season, transport, accommodation and planned activities can completely change what is useful to pack — and what ends up staying unused.
City Trip Lab uses real European trips to build destination-specific packing advice over time.
Real trips, real packing lessons
Our current experience includes short trips to Paris, Prague, Copenhagen and Durbuy.
These trips were not originally planned as City Trip Lab experiments. We reconstructed what we packed, what we actually used and what we would do differently now.
That gives us a useful starting point, but future trips will be documented much more systematically.
You can see how we collect and compare this information in the Packing Lab.
Paris
Paris showed us how easily having plenty of luggage space can lead to overpacking.
Travelling by car meant there was little pressure to pack efficiently. We brought more clothing than we needed, a second pair of shoes that stayed unused and toiletries that took up more space than necessary.
Warm and wet weather also showed that a heavy autumn coat was less useful than a lighter rain solution.
A future Paris guide will focus on practical packing for walking, changing weather and short stays.
Prague
Our Prague trip reinforced one pattern we had already seen: a second pair of shoes was packed but not needed.
A small trolley and backpack were more practical than our earlier luggage choices, but we still packed clothing that remained unused.
Public transport also reduced the need for some of the travel arrangements we had made in advance.
Future Prague content will combine city-specific packing with what we learned about moving around the city.
Copenhagen
Copenhagen was another example of packing for the season rather than the actual weather.
A winter-style coat was often too warm while walking, especially when the sun appeared.
Once again, the second pair of shoes remained unused.
By this trip we had also moved towards refillable toiletry containers, which worked better for us than carrying full-size products.
Durbuy
Durbuy was different from our city trips.
It was a longer family stay with more people, dogs, a car and accommodation where everyone brought extra items “just in case”.
That made it a useful example of how group travel can create duplicate packing.
Many household items and backup items were never used.
We therefore treat Durbuy as supporting travel experience rather than a typical city-trip packing test.
Edinburgh: our first planned Packing Lab trip
Edinburgh will be our first city trip where the packing process is documented before and after the journey.
We plan to record bag size, packed weight, clothing, shoes, toiletries, weather expectations, what was actually used and what remained untouched.
This will allow us to move from reconstructed travel memories to deliberately collected packing data.
In the meantime, our 3-Day European City Break Packing List combines the patterns we have already found across previous trips.
Destination guides will grow with our trips
We do not want to publish generic destination packing guides based only on information copied from other travel websites.
Destination content will therefore grow as we revisit cities, complete new trips and collect better data.
Research may be used to add practical information such as climate, airline rules or transport options, but our own travel experience will always be clearly separated from researched information.
Where we are going next
Future destination content will focus on practical questions such as what weather actually requires, how much walking is involved, whether specialist footwear is useful and which items were unnecessary in the bag.
Different city. Different conditions. Same question: what did we actually need?