Pack it in

A fashion capital, you know. Mr O’Leary would probably say he doesn’t give a f***, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t. You can’t turn up in Milan without looking the part. Or at least partly the part.

Trouble is, looking partly the part means kilos. A cocktail dress or two for her, a suit for him. Nice shirts. Nice shoes. How else is one to keep up with the Milanese? And then there’s sunblock and a guidebook and a camera and some underpants. You wouldn’t begrudge us a change of undies, now, would you, Mr O’Leary? And what if, on one’s cheeky little weekend, one wanted to go for a bit of a walk around a bit of a lake? The Italian lakes aren’t far, but you could do with walking shoes, and they’re not light.

Maybe Mr O’Leary is doing us all a favour. Who, after all, has ever worn all the clothes they’ve packed? Not regretted how much they’ve given themselves to lug all the way to Timbuktu? Never felt green-eyed rage at those smart alecks who zip straight past the luggage carousel with their zippy little wheelies? Travelling light is undoubtedly a good thing, but Enforced Travelling Light? Surely that’s an infringement of our statutory rights. Worth testing, though. Before we have no option.

So, off we went to swanky Milan, with our 10 kilos and our grand plans. And, like so many things, it’s a battle of the sexes. Because girls can’t pack light and they love to shop (can we have a 20kg allowance on the way home, please, Mr O’Leary?), says he. Because boys don’t need to pack as much, because one suit fits all, says she. Here is our lightweight travel diary…

PACKING

Matt: she’s already struggling.

Far be it from her to question the importance of increased security in this day and age. It’s not like she’s going to pack a harpoon, or a hunting knife, or a throwing star, or tear gas, or a blow-torch,or her lacrosse stick. But what about the eyebrow tweezers and the nail scissors? You can’t pack those in your hold luggage, because there isn’t any hold luggage. She’s going to be a scratchy, hairy traveller, she complains bitterly.

I have to pack my size 11 smart shoes because they aren’t comfortable enough to wear from Our House to Stansted to Bergamo to Milan to The Hotel. But I have to wear my suit because it won’t squish into the wheelie. Which means suit-and-sandals all the way to Italy.

What with the shoes, the camera (Nikon F70, big lens, won’t go away without it, even if it does weigh 1.35kg) and my book (halfway through the new Justin Cartwright, 620g, but at least it’s not Harry Potter, at 840g, or War and Peace, 1.25kg), I haven’t the slightest chance of squeezing in any more than a T-shirt and shorts. Precious grams are saved, and precious sex appeal is lost, with the executive decision to pack Y-fronts rather than boxers.

Harriet: it’s the size restriction rather than the weight that is the biggest pain. I make a pile of what I would normally take on a weekend to Milan, then cut it in half. Then I cut it into quarters and it’s still too much.

The Starr Wood cartoon on Matt’s parents’ bathroom wall seems strangely relevant — a distraught old lady beside a vegetable barrow saying: “If I buy the spuds, I can’t afford to buy the coal to cook ‘em, and if I buy the coal, I can’t afford the spuds!” It’s called The Quandary, and I know exactly how she feels. If I pack the comfortable trainers (800g), I can’t afford to take the Karen Millen dress (300g) and the stilleto heels (500g). So I don’t.

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THE FLIGHT OUT

Matt: we have our first proper argument at 6.50am in the Pink Elephant car park. It’s because Harriet is cheating. She’s got her wheelie and a plastic bag. In the plastic bag, I find her mobile, some tissues, a bottle of water, lipstick, sunglasses and a wallet.

“You can’t take that,” I shout. “Ryanair terms and conditions clearly state: ‘Only one small piece of hand baggage (eg handbag or briefcase), weighing not more than 10kg and being less than 50cm x 35cm x 23cm in dimensions, is allowed in the cabin.’”

“I haven’t got any pockets,” she shouts back.

Sure, we might have got away with another little handbag. But this is a scientific test, and rules is rules. After some foot-stamping, Harriet agrees to leave the plastic bag in the car and gives me its contents to put in my suit: “You’ve got pockets. You carry everything.” Which is far more annoying. When I walk, I rattle, and my nice suit now looks like a fly-fisherman’s waistcoat.

We arrive at check-in just after everyone else. The couple in front of us are extremely short, as is the length of time they plan to stay in Italy (two days), but they’ve got 28kg of hold luggage, a rucksack and a monster handbag. They would be in big trouble if O’Leary’s Law were enforced. As for us, I’m on 8.8kg and Harriet’s on a mere 7.9kg. If it hadn’t been for the volume restrictions, this would have been a cinch.

We arrive at the gate just after everyone else as well but once we’ve battled our way to two seats down the back, we’re up and away on time. Apart from the fact that I’m sweating like a fat man in a steam room, things are going well.

Harriet: Matt spends the whole flight complaining about how unfair it is that the two (American) ladies who are taking up three seats at the front must weigh a good 200kg apiece, and that he weighs just 78kg, and that, if there were any justice in the world, air- lines would set a limit that included you and your luggage. I’d like to ignore him and read my book, but that would involve opening my wheelie. Which would be like opening a bottle of champagne: irreversible.

We arrive in Bergamo Milan-ish and it is hot. The joy of wheeling straight past all the suckers stuck at the luggage carousel dissipates a little when we have to wait for a late noon coach.

At 12.15, we and the people from the luggage carousel set off on the 45-minute slog to Milan. I’m slightly clammy. Matt is sweating profusely. We scatter our clutter across the coach — suit jacket (with passports and money) on the overhead shelf, sunglasses on the seat, guidebook and mobile phone in the basket, water bottle on my lap. Because we’re arguing about who should carry the clutter, we leave most of it on the coach when we leave.

CHECKING IN

Matt: I’m beginning to realise how bad the suit-and-sandals look is. There are many stupid looks — apparently tutus and ponchos are in this season — but suit-and-sandals clearly reaches a new level. I think this is noted by the concierge at the supercool, supertasteful, super-wish-I-wasn’t-wearing-sandals Park Hyatt. Not only is he not wearing sandals, he has a better- fitting suit than me.

Harriet: I am also beginning to realise how bad Matt’s look is. It isn’t Ryanair’s fault, though the fact that he can’t change into anything less embarrassing is. Our room, on the other hand, is great. And it has what every woman dreams of — a walk-in wardrobe. What could we possibly use it for?

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ON THE TILES

Matt: it’s really rather hot in Milan. I should just be wearing chinos and a short-sleeved shirt. Maybe some boat shoes. But I’m in the suit, trying to look cool, wondering whether you can get heatstroke in the evening. Now I’ve got snazzier shoes on, I’m not getting any puzzled looks. As long as the sweat patches don’t actually join up, I should make it through.

Harriet: out on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, all the women are dressed up to the Nancy Dell’Olios. There’s a lot of hip-swinging, lip-pouting and nine-inch heels going on. I content myself with my indecently short skirt and spangly flip-flops, both lightweight and just about passable in Milan’s fashion-obsessed cocktail bars. But if this test were taking place in Sweden in December, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I don’t have that Newcastle constitution.

THE DAY TRIP

Matt: if you’re silly enough to go to Milan in August, you must be sensible enough to escape to the lakes for a day. Lake Como is only 40 minutes away by train, so on Sunday morning we make a run for it. Trouble is, you need a whole different set of luggage once you step out of town: things like walking shoes (nope), comfort-able clothing (just) and a decent day sack. We didn’t have a day sack — we only had our wheelies. It ‘s just not practical to wheel a guidebook, sunblock, water and a map around a lake.

We arrive at breakfast with what we could muster — a large WH Smith bag and a small WH Smith bag. We are bag people. We should be under a bridge at Waterloo.

Mario, the concierge, has put yesterday’s suit-and-sandals scandal behind him — he knows we’re weird, he understands we’ve come to Milan with hardly any luggage and he’s happy to be of assistance. Like a magician, he whisks a designer carrier bag from under his counter. Now we are designer bag people as we stroll around the lake. Better, but not ideal.

Harriet: I can guarantee that when Shelley wrote “this lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty”, he didn’t have Matt sitting next to him complaining that he hadn’t had room to pack his swimming trunks. And no, he won’t swim in his Y-fronts, because there are some Italian grannies further along the beach who might laugh. I have brought my bikini (120g), and as I swim away from Matt and the grannies into the clear, cool waters of Lake Como, all the stresses and strains of a minimalist weekend in Milan ebb away.

SHOPPING

Harriet: people go to Milan to shop, which is a huge problem if you���re on the 10kg luggage diet. First, you have to look the part just to go shopping (I’m wearing Birkenstocks and shorts, and walk out of Prada feeling like an Austrian farmer’s wife). Second, you want to buy everything — particularly when the sales are on.

I have 2.2kg of weight and no space to play with. So I forgo the velvet trouser suit, the knitwear and the wonderful shoes, and settle instead on one pair of Diesel knickers and a bright-green trilby sunhat (which I will have to wear all the way home). It’s my best friend’s birthday next week — wouldn’t it have been lovely to buy her something nice from Milan? Tough: she’ll have to make do with this plastic canapé dish (140g).

Imagine if you wanted to buy a pair of jeans, or some prosciutto, or some of those marzipan fruit things for mum. A 10kg limit will put souvenir-sellers across Europe out of business. No room for the mini Eiffel Tower, the straw donkey, the Colosseum ashtray.

Matt: on the plus side, the shopping spree is uncharacteristically short. We have just enough time to walk all the way to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and establish that Leonardo’s Last Supper is not on show on Mondays. It probably said that in the guidebook, which was back at the hotel because we don’t have a day sack.

So we walk back, marvelling at how cheap some of the clothes shops in Milan are. And because we’re now obsessed with travelling light, we wonder whether you could fly here with no spare clothes, splash out a tenner each in Hennes and Promod for outfits to wear on the trip, then chuck ‘em before you fly home. Why? Because that would cost you only £20, rather than the £50 Ryanair might charge for the extra suitcase. Then we decide that it’s probably too much hassle.

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THE FLIGHT HOME

Harriet: it’s not even funny trying to repack our stuff into these incy-wincy wheelies. It takes more than an hour and a half, and the overspill goes into Matt’s jacket. Matt blames my (very limited) shopping. I blame the fact that he’s taking the Laura Tonatto toiletries, which, quite apart from being theft, is adding an extra 300g. He says I should be glad it isn’t the bathrobe (2.6kg).

Stress levels continue to rise as we wave goodbye to a misty-eyed Mario. We wheel off to the Metro and Matt can’t find our euros. We try to leave the Metro and Matt can’t find the tickets. We try to find the coach-ticket vendor, but Matt can’t find the coach-ticket-vendor map. And then, on the coach, I ask for my sunglasses and that’s the final straw. We have a scene on the way to the airport.

Spirits are rekindled with some good fortune at Milan-ish. As anyone lucky enough to have flown with Ryanair will know, there are no allocated seats. The earlier you check in, the earlier you are allowed to board at least, that’s the oh-so-egalitarian theory. We arrive late again; we’re numbers 158 and 159, very low on the get-two-seats-together pecking order. But it turns out that a fair chunk of the goody-two-shoes early birds only get to board the bus first. We get on the same bus five minutes later, so we’re nearer the doors. In the bundle between the bus and the plane, we quite unfairly come up trumps.

Matt: thanks to Ryanair’s 25-minute turnaround, litter from previous customers is scattered liberally all over the cabin.

Harriet manages to pick a seat covered in melted jelly babies. Only she doesn’t notice until she’s sat on them in her white skirt. Maybe this is some karmic payback for laughing at me in the Metro. We have a hyperactive child going bonkers on the seat in front of us, which is entirely beyond Ryanair’s control, but still contributes to what it would be fair to describe as grumpiness.

We land early, whizz past all the losers at the luggage car-ousel (it is a wonderful feeling) and join a queue for security. And I can’t find the effing passports. And Harriet says: “Where did you last have them?” And I feel like bursting into tears or setting the airport on fire. And we find them in my inside breast pocket just in time. And the scary security woman barks: “Where was your flight from?” And flustered Harriet says: “Awful, thanks.”

In the USA, that sort of misunderstanding would probably see us bundled off to Guantanamo Bay. Here, the woman just smiles. She’s seen it all before. She’ll see it a lot more if Mr O’Leary makes us travel light.

Travel brief

Matt Rudd and Harriet Perry stayed as guests of the Ed Tuttle-designed Park Hyatt Milano (0845 888 1234, www.hyatt.com), which opened last year and has doubles from £330, B&B. Their 50cm Cabin case wheelies were supplied by Delsey (020 8731 3530, www.delsey.com). Part of the Helium Light collection, they cost £95 each.

The flights: they paid £93.67 each to fly from Stansted to Bergamo with Ryanair. The airline currently allows 15kg of hold luggage and 10kg of hand luggage. On the same dates, booking at the same time, British Airways, which allows 23kg in the hold and 6kg hand luggage, had flights from Heathrow to Linate (7km from Milan) for £94.60. The airline says it has no plans to ban or charge for hold luggage.

EasyJet, Ryanair’s main low-cost rival, also confirmed it had no plans to change its allowances (20kg hold luggage; one piece of hand luggage 55cm x 40cm x 20cm, no weight restriction within reasonable limits).

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The verdicts:

THE STYLE EXPERT

Jay Hunt, 39, is a television presenter, writer and stylist best known as the on-screen stylist for BBC2’s Would Like to Meet.

“Matt and Harriet missed a big trick here: the smart way to travel light is by exploiting the lack of restrictions on how much you can wear on the plane. Air con prevents baking, so you can almost double your allowance if you dress clever.

Try — for her — white cotton dress over jeans, big leather belt, poncho and jacket, jewellery agogo and sunglasses on head, and — for him — summer trousers, fine knit sweater on top of T-shirt and under lightweight suit jacket, with another sweater or a long-sleeved cotton top round the shoulders.

“Hotels provide toiletries and towels, so just decant any must-have creams into tiny Muji or Body Shop containers that fit into bigger male pockets for travel.

Buy sunscreen and toothpaste there (it’s cheaper), use and chuck. Cull your make-up to two-in-one compacts only.

“Comfort and versatility are the keywords — there’s no leeway to have a fat day or change your mind, so take clothes that have been tried and tested at home. And for designer purchases, buy a Jiffy bag and mail them home.”

THE TRAVEL EXPERT

Paul Goodyer is the MD of Nomad Travel Stores (020 8889 7014, www.nomadtravel.co.uk), travel kit and health specialists who have supplied travellers and expeditions for more than 15 years.

“First, that wheelie was a 2.5kg luxury. Ryanair’s 50cm height restriction is 5cm less than most other airlines, so your choice of bags is limited, but the tough 40l Lowe Alpine Transit measures 50cm x 35cm x 23cm, has hide-away backpack straps and weighs a more reasonable 1.8kg. Matt could then upgrade his underwear and pack the swimmers.

“Second, the whole day sack/pocket fight: easily avoided with a bum bag that converts into a day sack. The Tatonka Superlight (190g) would have done the job for Matt, leaving Harriet to handle the passports and lippy — in a hide-away pouch. Go’s Body Pocket is probably the sexiest option.

“Third, shoes: on a short break, you can manage with just one pair each. Go for a modern travel shoe — the Columbia Holbrook, Irvington or Dunthorpe, for example: comfy on cobbles, smart enough (just) for dinner.

“Last, the book: it might sound a bit Fahrenheit 451, but rip out the pages as you go. And, if you were on an expedition, which this trip sounded like it became, you really should have sawn your toothbrushes in half. And gone commando.”