While exploring Croatia this past summer, from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, we road-tripped our way through Croatia - changing hotels, exploring old towns, climbing more stairs than I can count, and discovering some incredible places along the way.
For a trip with this much moving around, staying organized made a difference. I traveled with my TOBIQ Trolley Roller, and having everything divided into its own compartment meant less unpacking, repacking and searching for things at every stop.
The road trip
From Dubrovnik to Zagreb, we made our way through Croatia one old town at a time — changing hotels every few days, climbing more stairs than I can count, and stopping in places we hadn't even planned for. It's the kind of trip I love most: a little improvised, a lot of movement, and never quite unpacked.
The same thing that makes a road trip like this so good — the constant motion — is exactly what makes packing well or badly matter so much. Every hotel change is a chance to lose something, forget where you put your charger, or spend twenty minutes of a short morning digging through a bag instead of walking out the door.
This is where I actually noticed a difference. I traveled with the TOBIQ Trolley Roller, and having everything divided into its own compartment meant I wasn't unpacking and repacking from scratch at every stop. Toiletries stayed in their spot. Chargers stayed in theirs. I could grab exactly what I needed for one night without turning the whole bag inside out.
It sounds like a small thing until you're doing it for the eighth hotel in a row. Sometimes traveling better really does start with packing differently.
The compartments were the real win — not just "more space," but space that was already organized before I even started packing, so I wasn't the one inventing a system on day one and abandoning it by day three. And because the bag is built in two connected sections, I could pull just the smaller piece off and carry it separately into a museum, a quick walk through Zagreb's old town, or a restaurant, without hauling the whole trolley along.
Here's the part I want to be upfront about. Depending on how full you pack it, the combined bag can push past what some airlines consider a valid carry-on — and this wasn't consistent across the board. I had zero issues flying Delta with it fully packed. But on a couple of flights within Europe, I did run into gate agents who weren't willing to count it as a carry-on once it was completely full.
The workaround, if this happens to you: the two sections detach. Pulling the smaller bag off and carrying it as your personal item — the one that goes under the seat in front of you — solves it, and it's an easy fix once you know it's a possibility rather than something you're scrambling to figure out at the gate.
Croatia, you were unforgettable — and for once, so was my packing. 🤍
@shevisitsplaces | Menorca Slowly · Ana Salort