Image is La Fuensanta, the classic beauty of Andalusia
For overseas travel, we tend to travel heavy. If we're on ships and boats, or renting a car, it's pretty easy to travel heavy except when banging around airports.
We travel heavy because we do so many different things, from dressed-up to rough hiking, and everything in-between. We are partial to staying in tenutas in the countryside, and boutique hotels in town where they have overnight laundry service. Never really tried traveling light since our youth.
For our upcoming trip, we decided it made more sense to forget the Costco International car rental (which we highly recommend) and just to train it between cities even though I enjoy driving in Europe and getting lost usually leads to interesting adventures.
Traveling light means some form of carry-on-sized luggage, and an additional bag of stuff to hand-carry for which I usually use a large LL Bean tote bag containing reading stuff, a smaller day bag or briefcase that I stuff in there, camera, etc. Airlines never seem to mind that bag. I don't bother with laptop for recreation travel.
So my airplane plan is to wear the blazer and tie (which I like to wear traveling anyway because you get treated better if you look good), my largest hiking shoes, maybe a light jacket, wear the hat, etc. and to put other stuff in a carry-on.
But what sort? Gotta figure on needing a couple of dress shirts, nice shoes, polo shirts, toiletries, a few pairs of trousers, etc. No rain gear or sweater needed on this trip.
This travel pro likes his convertible Carry-on/backpack. We have hard-case rollers but that might be a better idea for me.
What do you do for light recreational travel?