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Portugal – What to Pack

One of the most important things to master with travel is the art of packing light. There’s a fine balance between packing all you want verses hauling heavy luggage through airports, trains, cars, and hotels. I can’t tell you what to leave behind because that’s a personal decision, but what follows are items I feel you must include.

• Keep a travel itinerary inside your checked baggage (and outside if your bag has an outer pocket). Itinerary should include all flights, hotels and their contact information, and of course your contact information. Also take a photo of your bags and keep it on your phone. These steps will greatly decrease the recovery time for any lost bags. Keep prescription drugs and a copy of the written prescription with you in your carry-on. Also keep your medicine in their prescription bottles. Customs agents may frown upon pills stored in unmarked bottles, duh.
• Bring a writing utensil with you in your carry-on. It’s nice to have one so that you can fill out your customs declaration form while still on the plane. Flight attendants should have some, but don’t count on it.
• Always pack an extra cell phone charger in your checked baggage and of course another one in your carry-on. And if you’re really cool like me you’ll have a spare phone battery (Android).
• An average May day in Lisbon will feature less than a 20% chance of rain, average humidity, and little wind. The average high temperatures in May will be in the low 70s (fahrenheit). Which means for our morning on-location photo sessions you should expect temperatures to be in the mid to upper 50s so be sure to pack a light jacket.
• Lisbon sits in a river valley with much of the city being hilly. With that in mind some of our location shooting will feature some up and down elevation changes. Bring shoes appropriate for moderate inclines.
• As far as outfits are concerned, you’ll have two considerations. First the on-location sessions will be treated like a model’s fashion shoot so you’ll need clothing appropriate to that objective. But if you have also booked a traditional boudoir session, lingerie would be required. To help with some ideas take a look at my blog post for Wardrobe Considerations. And for a list of online retailers visit my Resources page.