So the budget airlines here in Europe are super cheap but also super pricks when it comes to carry-on luggage. When I flew RyanAir to Dublin I took meticulous care to keep my bag under 10kgs so that I could bring it as a carry on. Unfortunately after the snotty French guy weighed my bag (it was exactly 10 kg) he “wasn’t sure” about the dimensions of my rolly and I wasn’t able to jam the dam thing into the “your bag must fit into this to be carry-on” thingy. He sent me to pay for it to be checked in before I could get my boarding pass. Cost? 25 Euros one way which is incidentally almost the price of the ticket one way. Ouch.
This time, to go to London I flew EasyJet. They too are stingy about the carry-on baggage but sneakier than RyanAir. When I bought my ticket online the option for number of checked bag was defaulted to 1 charging you an extra 20 euros one way. You have to manually change it to 0 to avoid the extra charge. They also call a carry on bag “hand luggage” and have a picture that looks like you can only bring on what looks like a purse and X-ing out what looks like a rolly but if check the allowable size dimension is rolly is fine.
The good thing about EasyJet is you can check in online if you only have a carry-on. That means there’s no snotty French guy to weigh your carry on or check its dimensions. Unfortunately breaking the rules is risky since they make it clear that if you exceed the size or weight limitation they can refuse to let you board the plane.
I considered my options and bought a new rolly that I knew for a fact fit the allotted dimensions and decided to ignore the weight limit since I’ve never seen any kind of weighting device at the gate.
Still two weeks is a lot of outfits and underwear to pack so I actually didn’t have enough space for everything. Clearly I had only one option left. And that was to wear half of my London wardrobe on the plane.
I donned a tank top, t-shirt, sweatshirt , plaid jacket, and massive coat and complimented my outfit with knee high boots and purse stuffed with extra socks and headed to the airport.
Security sucked because I basically had to remove everything and then put it back on whilst avoiding the why do you have three pairs of socks in your purse stares. Still I made it through without any problem.
So I’m sitting there at the gate waiting for the plane and sweating b/c I’m wearing so much freaking clothes when one of the flight attendant approaches me and tells me in French that I’m only allowed one bag on the plane so I must put my purse in my rolly. I pretended not to understand French (it’s a trick I learned in Japan to get away with stuff) but he switched to English so I had to comply.
Having spent a good part of my youth playing Tetris I’m pretty good at packing but wasn’t able to perform any miracles and could only fit half the contents of my purse into my rolly.
Good thing my massive coat also had massive pockets which I stuffed with socks, French biscuits (I couldn’t stay at someone’s place and not bring them something), and a guidebook.
At this point I’m sure I looked some sort of sweaty kleptomaniac stripper that gets paid for each layer of clothing she takes off.
Bare in mind I was in this state for the duration of the flight. But also keep in mind that I saved 20 euros.
…
Next time I think I’ll use that extra 20 euros and take the chunnel.
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