Some people can stay firm, keeping their college backpack and eschewing all unnecessary, overly designed items. Shopping at a travel-goods store with Betty was a hoot; she looked at the piles of neatly stacked organizers and rolled her eyes. I wanted all of them.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here are the items I can either vouch for (because they are a recent gift) or want want want.

Luggage and Bags

1. 19″ Jelly Bean Hideo Wakamatsu rolling suitcase, Flight 001, $185

I have already waxed rhapsodic about my love of my bright yellow rolling suitcase from Japan–how every time I’m in line, people cheerfully pipe up about how much they love it; how I get better service from the in-flight crew because they, too, love and covet it; and how it miraculously seems to carry everything I need for every trip.

Well, to cut a long story short: It comes in orange.

2. Sackville Shop Sack, Rivendell Bikes, $40

If orange is a little over the top for you, consider this cargo tote–good for long weekends and–if you’re slightly obsessed with your bike, like me–can be used once you’re back home, as well.

3. MUJI Folding Travel Case, MOMA, $16

I love a no-frills-ish travel case, which is why I love this one from MUJI. To be honest, I like the aesthetic of all their stuff, and picked up a small purse insert at the MUJI mothership when I was there last month.

More non-luggage recommendations after the jump!

Gear and Tech Goodies

4. Grid-It, Flight 001, $17 (small)  and $22 (medium)

I’ve wanted one of these for a while. I’m always paranoid about leaving behind chargers and other cords. A tidy system like this means that I’m more likely to notice, since there’d be a blank spot in the grid. Want.

5. iPhone 4 Hard Cover, Kate Spade, $40

Ever since I dropped my previous iPhone on the unforgiving floors of this unpleasant motel (cough–I mean hotel), I’ve wanted a nice case. This Mad Men-era homage/cutie totally fits the bill, and the bright green means I won’t accidentally leave it on a mini-bar somewhere.

6. P5 Mobile Headphones, Bowers & Wilkins, $300 

These are pricey, I admit. I got a pair for my birthday, when I sat in close proximity to a co-worker with a barky laugh. They drowned her out, just as they blissfully drown out the unpleasant noise that is modern air travel. And while I’m not an audiophile, the sound they deliver is amazing, and they fold up flat to fit in a cozy pouch. They are winners.

Travel Books and Apps

7. The Cities Book, Lonely Planet, $50

What could be better than a five-pound tome on the cities of the world? Newelty is firmly in the urban archipelago camp, where most of our travel itineraries include at least one major metropolis, which is why this book is so appealing as a coffee-table read between trips.

8. A Week at the Airport and The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton, $15 and $9

I mentioned the first book in my fall reading list, and it strikes me as a perfect stocking stuffer for anyone who appreciated a meditative approach to travel. The second is simply a classic by an author who appears regularly in this blog.

9. Time Out City Apps, $4.99

A long time ago, I was excited about some of the first e-travel books. That time is clouded in foggy memory, though, since I never made much use of them. These city apps have the one must-have feature that makes me willing to try them: that you yourself can be located on their in-app maps. I’m so used to traveling with my iPhone map as my GPS that I’m cranky when I’m abroad, shaking my fist at the absurdly high roaming charges. These apps seem like a nice way to bridge the distance from our current fee-heavy reality to the future, when social media replaces our guidebooks entirely.

Bonus: The London and Sydney apps are currently free! Go check them out.

10. Camerabag, $2 (for iPhone) and $19 (for Mac and PC)

For some reason, Hipstamatic gets all the attention when it comes to a good iPhone photography app. I have both, but I use Camerabag ten times as much, and with much better end result. Most of the photos on this blog have a version that’s been rendered in Camerabag, in fact, which is why it’s one of my top 8 apps for traveling with your iPhone.

11. Universal power adapter, Thinkgeek, $17

Truth be told, I have a giant bag of power adapters, including for places I haven’t been to yet. (Travel dreams!) I love the simplicity of the One Adapter to Rule Them All. And as I read the list of countries covered by this adapter I thought: Tajikistan takes the Australasian style plug? I can’t locate that on a map–and I’d never heard of that style before–but you never know…I might end up there someday…and really want to charge up my laptop.

Practical Luxuries

12. Blazing Trench, nau, $350

OK, this coat isn’t cheap. But that’s kind of the point. We don’t buy fugly reversible “travel” dresses that we wouldn’t wear at home. (Or, for that matter, onesies to camp in, no matter what the Guardian says.) This coat is a great coat, and that it would serve you well for winter travel is a secondary part of the appeal.

If you’re interested, we have a recommendation for a men’s coat, as well.

13. A pre-paid chip and PIN card

Sure, the days of traveler’s checks are far behind us, but we haven’t completely moved into a friction-free future when it comes to accessing your cash. When I was in Holland this summer, for example, I had to constantly remember to keep cash on me because the groceries stores only take “chip and PIN” cards, not my foreign-born bank cards. 

At long last you can buy a pre-paid one of these, and it seems like a fantastic idea for those annoying small purchases. It sounds like you need to buy one at a Travelex booth (most likely at the airport) for now, rather than online.

14. Zipcar membership

Zipcar beats traditional car rental, hands down. If you have a road-trip-loving friend who’s based in or heading to the cities that Zipcar covers, a membership would be a great gift. Read my full Zipcar trip review.

Plus One More

15. Wake Me Up Button, $7 CAD

Next time I go to London (and decide to take public transportation in to the city after that sleepless 9-hour flight from Seattle), I’m pinning one of these on. (No direct link–go to http://uptoyoutoronto.com/ and search on “wake me up button.”)

Happy holiday shopping!

Which is why I was intrigued by Zipcar. It’s hard to imagine a road trip with more novelty than the ability to drive a different car every time.

I took Zipcar for a test drive for a 300-mile road trip to the Oregon Coast:

The Zip trip reminded me that novelty can sometimes be magical–and sometimes be a little too open to chance.

First, the things that are fantastic about Zipcars:

• No more time in the grey waiting rooms of rental car dealerships. (The only thing more bleak in travel is soul-numbing travel conferences.)
• Living in the wondrous iPhone-ful future. (I should add Zipcar’s iPhone app to my list of iPhone app favorites for travel.)
• Having cars immediately available on short notice, if you live in one of the Zipcar cities.

In short, Zipcar is the kind of Gen Xish idea that seems like a stroke of genius: Use the Internet to help make car ownership less appealing (and therefore inch us Americans towards a greener future) and provide a quick service to those of us with limited attention spans.

Win.

Plus the card itself unlocks the car, which is very Blade Runner:

Now, the downside.

After my first few Zipcar rental experiences, I was ready to write an unending rave about how wondrous this idea was.

The problem with all great human enterprises–especially when novelty is involved–is that it actually involves the humans. Sometimes, you visit a beach that’s pristine, because everyone’s taken incredible care to pack out their garbage. Sometimes, it’s the tragedy of the commons. Zipcar is beholden to the same dynamic.

Zipcar does its best with its 6 rules of the road. But as any frequent flier knows, people are often selfish jackasses.

One of the rules of Zipcar is no smoking, ever. I picked up a rental car in a seedy garage (that should have been my first sign), and was motoring down the road before I realized that there was a creeping smell of cigarettes permeating the car. Nasty.

I had the idea of having the car for a day-long trip, but realized that the subtle stench was giving me a headache. I drove the Zipcar back, returned it early, and wrote them an email once I was home.

Zipcar rules state that you have to declare any damage (including smoke) before you leave with the car. Because I didn’t do the sniff test when I first got in, basically, I was hosed–I wound up paying for hours of a car rental that I didn’t use because someone else was a jackass. To top it off, the email response from the company didn’t offer to refund my cash–and was a little snippy, reminding me that I should have called immediately when I picked up the car, but since I didn’t, there was nothing they could do. (They don’t check every car between every use.)

So that’s the highs and lows of novelty car rental in a nutshell: Sometimes it pays off huge dividends in the form of novelty and convenience…sometimes it reminds you how much other people can suck.

That said, I’ll still use Zipcars again. They have a built-in advantage, since rental cars are certainly no better of a customer experience, and their techie ingenuity is charming and well-designed. But I’ll go into the experience eyes wide open, remembering that some people are still the equivalent of the jackasses who would throw their empty beer bottles on the beach.

Here was the question from a friend:

You have an iPhone, don’t you? Have you used it internationally? I’m thinking of getting one, but have heard conflicting things about using it while traveling: Really steep roaming fees and you can’t unlock it and buy foreign SIM cards. Is this true? It would be nice to get your take on it.

The Big Picture

I use my iPhone when I travel, and actually can’t imagine life without it. I’m waiting for the magical day when data roaming is free, and I can use Google maps in Amsterdam the same way I use them in New York.

That said, you definitely can have a huge bill at the end of a trip with an iPhone. I traveled to Vancouver, and for some reason had a brain freeze and forgot that it was a whole other county. Looking up a couple of restaurants and receiving a text cost me forty bucks. Yuck.

The Tricky Stuff

You can’t unlock an iPhone (well, unless you are a turbo nerd), and there’s no easy swap-in and swap-out of SIM cards, as you can with cheapie European phones. If you want an iPhone primarily as a phone, you’d be better off buying a $10 job in the country you’re visiting.

Although AT&T does offer international phone rates, they’re still pretty pricey. Theoretically, Skype has an iPhone app that enables you to make free calls via Wi-Fi, but I haven’t tried it personally myself yet and can’t vouch for it. (But if you have, please let us know in the comments!)

If you want to use an iPhone primarily for a phone (with Skype), your success will depend on whether you’re likely to have lots of access to Wi-Fi. So if you’re heading to Scandinavia–thumbs up! If you’re heading to a remote Greek Island…you may be out of luck.

That said, though there are a few reasons that an iPhone is a great travel buddy.

If you take the steps to make sure you’re not getting roaming charges, it’s a perfect email delivery system on the road. I’m actually so retentive about getting forty-dollar roaming charges that I generally leave the airplane setting on all the time when I’m in Europe, because then I’m absolutely sure I’m not incurring any fees. I turn off airplane mode when I’m in a known Wi-Fi spot, like a hotel. But the rest of the time, when I’m traveling, I can listen to music and take pictures and not worry that I’m accidentally receiving email.

For something less drastic, you just need to change the settings not to push email to the phone–meaning, to go out and get the mail and deliver it to you automatically. Along with turning “fetch new data” off, you set it to “turn data roaming off,” and only connect with Wi-Fi. AT&T has full instructions on how to do it.

The Fun Stuff!

Now let’s talk about the stuff that makes an iPhone awesome–apps! Here are the eight that I use all the time when I travel, including internationally:

1. CameraBag App gives you a bunch of ways of treating your photos, including something that makes all your pics look like magazine layouts. I use this instead of the native photo app. Plus, it includes a Polaroid option.
2. MoreLomo replicates the Lomo camera I used to have, so I love this app and how it makes photos look cool and artsy. (See below.)
3. Zagat to Go replaces the Yelp app for me for restaurant advice. I liked Yelp…until I got food poisoning from one of their recommendations. Now I ignore the crowdsourced opinion and go with editor’s verified picks.
4. MultiClock is great because it displays four timezones in a style that looks like it was designed to be the official app of the Bauhaus timekeeper movement.
5. SwissRailClock is just what it sounds like–those awesome railway clocks on your iPhone, reminding you of Europe from home, too.
6. WordRoll, as in WordRoll NE (for “Netherlands,” the language I’m learning), is my favorite translation app. I’ve tried just about every last language-software app, and this one was the best in terms of accuracy and ease-of-use. I use it all the time in Dutch class, too!
7. Mint was a bit of a pain to set up, but now I check it all the time, and I can’t think of a better way to keep track of all your expenses–including credit card charges–from on the road.
8. Facebook is pretty obvious, but still worth mentioning for those who haven’t tried it. It actually seems easier to use than the Web-based browser, and it makes airport layovers much less tedious.

My favorite Lomo-fied photo from my trip to NYC last weekend, taken with my iPhone.

a favorite vintage store in Austin, home to SXSW Interactive

I’ve attended a couple of social media conferences lately, and with South by Southwest (or for the too-cool-for-school, #sxsw) around the corner, I’ve been wondering: Why hasn’t social media created even more of a sea change as to how we travel? Why hasn’t it replaced my guidebook?

I’m planning to go to Vught in the Netherlands to attend a fancy-pants language school to learn Dutch (more on that in later posts). I’m not going to use dopplr for that trip because, frankly, it seems more pain than what it’s worth. And even so, I can’t access it–or any other recommendations–as I’m walking down the street, using my iPhone, until there’s a reasonable international data-roaming plan. Is that the holdup?

Writing for the Guardian, Vicki Baker says that the problem of sharing travel advice through social media is of information overload, at least as far as the Secret London Facebook group goes.

There’s something to that. I want the filters to be customized and incredibly well-curated.

What I want, in whatever form, is a custom-made guidebook–either on the page or on my phone–one that I cobble together from all my online research, including a bit from Twitter and Facebook.

I use Yelp. I ask Facebook friends for recommendations all the time. I’m thrilled when a post here is retweeted, and I enjoy finding something worth reposting to newelty’s Twitter feed. I get a little giddy around shiny new gadgets.

For pete’s sake–I went to conferences on social media. For fun. I’m not the Internet-will-never-succeed guy from 1995. I love technology, and honestly want to know: Why isn’t social media more influential in travel writing and our travel experience beyond the “hey have you tried this restaurant?” post on Facebook?

Which is how we get to this building:

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

Tokyo is on my top three list of places to go to next, and this kind of innovation is part of the reason why. According to Buzz-Beast’s helpful summary: looking at the building through the app can “display up to date shop information, interactive advertisements and even display the tweets that are coming out of the building.”

Crazy, but kind of awesome.

Hooray.

Now if only international data roaming fees could go away, we’d be in the 21st century of my dreams.

(Hat tip to Swissmiss for pointing this one out to me, since it’s not like I was actually watching the Superbowl.)

Evidently, Matt Gross, the New York Times Frugal Traveler hasn’t. Or he wouldn’t have his 2010 resolutions made up of patently obvious items for anyone who’s ever actually traveled on a budget.

Here are two of the six gems of wisdom for the cost-minded:

3. Learn to Love Buses.

4. Learn to Like Hostels.

This stuff makes me crazy, because 18-year-old with a Eurail pass knows these things. How about “eat in fewer four-star restaurants”? “Travel in the off-season”? “Don’t fly first class”?

To dress them up as pearls of wisdom is the equivalent of a how-to article on painting a room including the following:

3. Strip Off Wallpaper. Paint gets lumpy when wallpaper lies beneath.

4. Apply Primer Before Paint.

One related note about his first resolution:

1. Put Down the iPhone. It’s time to remove that pixelated barrier I’ve erected between myself and the world and see what I can find with my own two eyes.

The data plans and international roaming rates for the iPhone are insane, which means you’re already not a frugal traveler if you’re using one abroad. If you’re jumping from WiFi spot to WiFi spot, you’re probably not at the kinds of places I consider “frugal.”

A place with a bathroom down the hall and an elderly front-desk clerk who looks at you strangely when you ask if the establishment has Internet–that’s my version of frugal.

I consider the iPhone a huge boon to my travel experience, and am ready for a reasonable international data roaming plan to be released someday soon. I’m ready to ditch guidebooks filled with absurdly obvious travel advice. (I like Jaunted‘s take on replacing a bookshelf of guidebooks with an iPhone on the road.)

And I can also talk to people, even with a iPhone available nearby. I’m a multitasker like that.