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I need a new suitcase

January 13, 2020 3 Comments Filed Under: Travel

  • Cool couple in Bordeaux with brightly coloured suitcases.

I need a new suitcase. I’m leaving for Japan next week. The two I have are broken and they didn’t last long. I’ve been kind of obsessed with luggage for several months now.

I spent part of my last holiday in France making a special cover for one of them, out of vintage tea towels.

  • Yup, I made this on a 100 year old sewing machine. It houses a Unitravel red and white vintage suitcase. However this only lasted about four trips.

I wanted to protect it. But one of the wheel corners has collapsed, meaning it’s now impossible to wheel around. My other suitcase, a hard shell red and white spotted one I bought in South Africa five years ago for about £90, has cracks and holes in it and one of the wheels no longer works.

I’ve been looking at suitcases around the internet. While I love the style of the vintage looking Unitravel, it’s doubled in price over the last couple of years and isn’t strong enough for air travel.

  • Unitravel vintage style suitcase

I bought this one by Ho-Jax off amazon. It. looks similar to the vintage Unitravel but costs less. But when it came, it looked so disappointingly cheap and nasty I sent it back. That’s the trouble with internet shopping.

What I want, what I really really want, is a Globe-Trotter suitcase. They are gorgeous but also a couple of thousand quid. They last forever, in fact age improves them, they are repairable, lightweight (made from cardboard), vintage, strong. I love this blog post ‘How great things age’ about one man’s stylish Globe-Trotter.

  • Gorgeous aren’t they? Globe-Trotter suitcases.

I’m on the look out for a second-hand one. I’ve heard you can get the Globe-Trotter factory, which is British and uses Victorian machinery, to add wheels and straps. I don’t have the money for what I really really want. Globe-Trotters are the suitcase equivalent of an Aga, fantastically expensive but solid, traditional, beautiful, functional, and lasts a lifetime. Those are my design values. This is what the Queen uses.

I’ve also discovered this Czech factory Kazeto which sells vintage style suitcases, with wooden slats, at a more reasonable price, but they aren’t on wheels.

  • Kazeto cardboard suitcase from Manufactum, only £31 for this smaller size, but no wheels.

So looking further afield into more modern baggage, there is the Away suitcase which I spied being wheeled about by food writer Meera Sodha last year when we did a press trip together.

‘My husband bought me it as a present’ she mentioned.

So I’m envious twice over, not only has she got a husband, but he’s the kind of guy who buys thoughtful elegant presents. Away comes in stylish pastel shades like millennial pink and has a mobile phone charging facility. Brilliant.

  • Away suitcases with ejectable phone battery. Cool as fuck.

I’m also fascinated by Crash baggage – these witty suitcases come already damaged- pre-dented- and in bright colours. I love the transparent one, but you’d have to pack carefully- no period underwear and nothing illegal. Do customs just wave you through?

  • Empty transparent
  • Bright yellow
  • Full Transparent
  • Army green

In the past I’ve crammed suitcases full of aubergines, butter, artichokes. So the transparent Crash suitcase would suit me. As a food and wine writer, I always get check-in luggage, so I can bring home liquids or foods surrounded in liquid.

  • This was my suitcase at the end of a trip to Sicily: purple cauliflowers, artichokes, cheese, bottarga, pistachios from Bronte.
  • After a trip to Naples, lots of lemons from a farmer and starting my spaghetti collection.

For non check-in, I use a small backpack stuffed with laptop and camera which I don’t want to risk checking in. I need another one of those too. My Cath Kidston day pack, bought in the sale at an airport, is falling apart, zips are broken and the side pockets aren’t large enough for a water bottle.

The Union Jack holdall on wheels below lasted a considerable amount of time considering it only cost £25. But it died in India.

  • Going on the P and O cruise.

What kind of suitcase do you use? Do you go hard shell or soft? Vintage or modern? Cheap or expensive? Comment here with recommendations please.

  • This is my suitcase after a trip to Alaska and Portland. Full of hot sauce, eskimo knives, candied salmon, birch syrup, beechwood sheets for cooking salmon.

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Comments

  1. helen emsley

    January 14, 2020 at 5:29 pm

    Eagle Creek Tarmac for dashing across ferry ports and anywhere where the surface is uneven. Samsonite for gliding through airports.

    Reply
    • msmarmitelover

      January 15, 2020 at 1:45 pm

      interesting.I didn’t know about Eagle Creek Tarmac. Thanks for the suggestion

      Reply
  2. Margo

    January 15, 2020 at 1:41 pm

    You need to be redy

    Reply

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam. Rose Appl Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam.  Rose Apple Blossom Tarts

Serves 8

Equipment: 
Microwave
Cupcake or muffin tin

I use a red-skinned apple to make these, to get a hint of blush at the edges of the ‘petals’.

Ingredients:
4 Pink Lady or Royal Gala apples, cored, cut into quarters, sliced thinly into half moons
1 lemon, squeezed
1 pack all butter readymade puff pastry 320g, on a roll, cut into 8 strips about 6 cms long
100g of melted butter
1/2 jar of rose jam
1 or 2 tbsp cinnamon or cardamom, ground 
Pinch maldon salt
2 or 3 tbsp icing sugar

Instructions

Prepare a bowl of acidulated water (cold water with lemon juice) to prevent browning.
Core the apples, and cut them in quarters. Slice thinly into half-moons (a mandolin is useful for this). 
Put them into a large bowl of cold water with the lemon.
Microwave the bowl of sliced apples for 5 minutes until soft enough to bend slightly but not cook them.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Roll out the puff pastry. Divide into 8 sections by cutting the roll into quarters then halving each quarter. You will end up with 8 approximately 6cm strips.
Brush the strip with melted butter then paint with a layer of rose jam. You can then dust with either ground cinnamon or cardamom.
Lay the apple slices along the top of the pastry strip, overlapping them. Fold up the bottom half of the pastry strip to make an pleat with the skin side of the apple half moon poking over the top.
Roll up the folded pastry strips until they look like a rose made of apple at the top
Place ‘rose’ side up, in a buttered cupcake tin
Repeat until all are done and bake for 20 -30 minutes.
Using a tea strainer or small sieve, sprinkle with icing sugar.
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