I am a proponent of traveling light. This stems from growing up in the heavy Samsonite-suitcase-as-graduation-present era without the funds to hire a porter. I once traveled three weeks in Thailand with two smallish nylon SportSacs and had room to spare for the souvenirs. Thus, the purchase of a monster suitcase for six months in Italy was out of character. The reasoning was well-founded as changes in weather required a much larger wardrobe, not an outrageous assumption. What was outrageous was thinking that such a bag would be portable and hiring a porter was still out of the question.

Baggage claim in airports is always a challenge, fraught with the anxiety that the airline and your bag will not agree on a destination. Upon arrival at Fiorentino, I approached the whirring conveyor belt eagle-eyed with fingers crossed. I watched as bag after bag met its owner. Bag after bag was not mine. It was so big, how could I have missed it? How could the airline have missed it? If you are a seasoned traveler, you will recognize that panicky feeling when the whirring stops and the empty conveyor belt grinds to a halt, all bags claimed. No monster bag in sight. The next four days were spent in the same travel clothes until monster was finally found and delivered three-and-a-half hours north of Rome. Airlines will deliver if they find the bag.

Onward with the monster. If you are lucky, such bags will only take up all of the room in the small trunks of cars common in Europe. If not, they won’t fit at all. I was safe if I traveled alone and kept the spare tire in the back seat but I was ready to ditch monster after three months. Unfortunately, circumstances and logistics prevented this disposal and I found myself again at baggage claim, this time in Venice. My fears were unfounded this time and the monster appeared for claiming. Struggling it onto the hotel launch, I made my way through the canals toward my home for the next three weeks in sestiere San Marco, a short walk from Piazza San Marco, two sets of bridge stairs from the launch dock, a fifth floor walk up. Monster is again a problem.

Old Venetian apartments have very high ceilings, eleven feet or higher. It’s a long way up five flights of stairs. The overnight flight from San Francisco with a stopover at Heathrow was not conducive to hauling a giant bag up those stairs so the monster spent the night in the trash room just inside the door. The next morning, braced with a strong cup of Italian coffee, I met the challenge and managed, step by step, to reach the top. It would be at least another three months before that bag saw the light of day. I bought a smaller bag, stored the monster in my friend’s closet then proceeded to travel throughout Italy with a greatly reduced wardrobe and a significantly lighter load. The bag now resides in a storage locker where it holds more reasonably sized bags. It’s a reminder–if you bring it, you carry it.

I follow the crowd. Climbing the spiral stairs up from deep beneath Montmarte at the Lamarck/ Caulaincourt Metro stop, I am happy to be a baggage-light traveler.

Traveling light is my signature. I always have the smallest backpack, fewest number of bags, least amount of superfluous clothing of anyone in any group. My goal is to carry everything on the plane, no checked luggage. I have it down to a science and, over the years, have found the perfect bags to meet that goal. Baggage-light means arriving at De Gaulle with a small daypack and a cabin-sized rolling bag ready to walk, however far, up however many steps to reach my destination without hailing a taxi. The trip into Paris from De Gaulle on public transportation was a breeze, on the flat or escalators, taking me from Gare de Nord to line 4 to line 12 arriving at my destination in just under an hour. Perfect.

Back to that spiral staircase. By landing number five, I am struggling with my baggage-light load and think I may not make it to the top. This upward journey started with three straight flights before the spiral even began. I was already panting at the second turn and praying that the end was near on the fourth. The good and the bad about a spiral staircase is that you can’t see that end.

The architect of those stairs must have known that five turns are all a body can withstand because that fifth landing was the last. As I proceeded to the exit gate, exhausted but happy to have made it and relieved that the return trip would be down, I watched a large number of people disembark from the elevator. Who knew?