Flying off on holiday and wondering where to leave the car? Book your airport parking in advance through our comparison tool. It lists dozens of guarded car parks with a transfer right to the terminal at fair prices. You can book straight away and cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before arrival.
Documents and essentials: what to take on holiday
Documents are the one category where losing them, or leaving them at home, ruins the entire trip. So put them together first, in a separate compartment or a belt bag of their own.
- Travel documents: a national ID card for travel within the EU, a passport for flights outside the Schengen area. The passport has to be valid for at least six months from the date you return. Check it a week ahead, not the night before the flight. Every family member, every child included, needs their own ID.
- Money and bank cards: foreign currency for destinations outside the eurozone, and a card with a sensible exchange rate for everything you pay for electronically. Carry at least two cards from different banks in case one gets blocked.
- Travel insurance and tickets: your insurance card or policy confirmation with the 24/7 assistance number on it. Save your tickets and boarding passes to your phone and keep a backup copy in your email.
- Important phone numbers: your embassy in the destination country, the local emergency services, your insurer and the contact for your accommodation. Store them offline – mobile data is not a given everywhere abroad.
Tip: copies of your documents, whether photos on your phone or files in the cloud, make losing an original far less painful.
How to pack a suitcase for a holiday? Start with clothes and shoes
Clothes are what people overpack most. The rule of thumb goes roughly like this: take half of what comes to mind, and twice as many socks and pairs of underwear.
- Summer holiday by the sea: swimwear (at least two sets), underwear, T-shirts and vest tops, shorts or skirts, one smarter dress or shirt for the evening, a light hoodie or scarf for cooler evenings and air-conditioned rooms, pyjamas, and something to cover your head so you do not burn.
- Footwear: flip-flops or sliders for the beach, sandals or comfortable shoes for town, water shoes for destinations with pebble beaches and rocky seabeds. One pair of proper closed shoes is plenty.
How to dress for the flight itself is covered in our separate guide to what to wear on a plane.
What to pack for a holiday: toiletries and a first-aid kit are a must
Toiletries are non-negotiable, yet they usually eat up far more room in the case than they need to. Buy small travel sizes, or decant what you use into mini bottles.
- Toiletries: shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste and toothbrush, deodorant, razor or epilator, sun cream with a suitable SPF, after-sun lotion, and insect repellent for destinations where the mosquitoes bite.
- Cosmetics: your basic make-up, remover and cotton pads. Anything liquid has to respect the 100 ml limit for hand luggage.
- First-aid kit: painkillers (ibuprofen, paracetamol), something for diarrhoea and nausea, antihistamines, panthenol, antiseptic, plasters and a bandage, insect repellent. Add travel-sickness tablets too if you are prone to it.
The exact rules for carrying medication on board (liquids, injections, prescription drugs) are set out in our article on taking medicines on a plane.
All packed? That leaves the parking. Our comparison tool lines up the guarded spaces near the airport by price, distance from the terminal and rating. Book your space today.
Electronics and travel accessories
Electronics are usually the priciest thing you pack. Check them last, right before you close the case.
- The essentials: phone and charger, plus a power bank for when the battery dies on a day trip or in the air. The rules for carrying a power bank on a plane and the capacities you are allowed are in our guide to power banks on a plane.
- Optional: laptop or tablet with its charger, headphones (wireless ones are far easier in the cabin), camera with a charger or memory card, hairdryer or hair straighteners.
- Accessories: a plug adapter – sockets differ from country to country and it is a classic thing to get caught out by. The USA, the UK, Thailand and Israel all use a different type from continental Europe. Sunglasses go in your hand luggage, not in the hold.
How to pack efficiently for a holiday
How you pack decides whether everything fits first time or whether you repack the case three times over.
- Rolling clothes instead of folding saves space and keeps creases down. T-shirts, joggers and light hoodies roll beautifully. Jeans and shirts do better folded flat.
- Packing cubes split the case into clear sections. Clothes, toiletries, electronics – each in its own bag. When you repack at the other end, you know exactly where to look. Compression cubes will also squeeze clothing down by 20–30%.
- Weighing the case at home saves you an excess baggage fee at the check-in desk. A digital luggage scale costs very little and earns its keep on every trip. If you are hovering on the limit, move the heaviest items into your hand luggage.
Packing apps and a travel checklist on your phone
A paper list gets lost, or stays behind on the kitchen table. A checklist on your phone goes everywhere with you.
Apps such as PackPoint or TripList, or plain notes with tick boxes, all do the job. PackPoint builds the list for you from the length of the trip and the destination, and it works offline. TripList lets you share one checklist with your partner or the whole family.
Simpler option: bookmark this page in your browser, open it offline or email it to yourself for reference. The template is universal and works for the beach and the mountains alike, for a week or for a month.
The advantage of an app over paper: you tick items off and add your own without rewriting the lot. Build the template once and it serves every trip the family takes.
For families with a baby or small children, this general list is only the starting point – add the child-specific items covered in our guide to flying with a baby, which includes a full packing list for infants and toddlers.
Before you shut the case, add one more line to the list: parking. Our comparison tool sorts it in two minutes. You will find the benefits of airport parking, and why a guarded space beats leaving the car free on the street, laid out in a clear comparison.
Fenced site, cameras around the clock, a shuttle straight to the terminal. You pay when you get there.
What not to forget on holiday with children
Travelling with children means a far longer packing list and a great deal more thinking about what to leave out.
- Documents for children: every child needs their own ID whatever their age (a national ID card is enough for flights within the EU, a passport for flights outside the Schengen area). If you are travelling without the other parent, some destinations ask for notarised consent.
- Babies and toddlers: pushchair (carried to the plane free of charge), travel cot, baby toiletries and SPF 50+ sun cream, enough nappies and wet wipes for the journey with some to spare, bottles, dummies, baby food, toys for the way. For the beach, a parasol or beach tent and a small paddling pool.
- School-age children: their own backpack with toys or a tablet for the journey, a favourite book or colouring book, and fever and diarrhoea medicine in a dose suited to their age.
- Children's first-aid kit: panthenol and a bite gel are the basics. Add something for fever (syrup or suppositories), plus diarrhoea and travel-sickness medicine dosed by age.
What not to forget, and what you can happily leave at home
The things people forget most are precisely the ones that never get packed in advance: chargers, the plug adapter, medication, the spare bank card from the drawer (not the one in your wallet) and the travel insurance.
What takes up space for nothing, on the other hand, is too many clothes (you can wash or buy things on the spot), heavy books (an e-reader holds an entire library) and a full-size bottle of shampoo (every hotel has the basics).
Ideally, run through the list again from the top the day before you leave. Whatever went in first can end up buried under everything else, and then you are panicking on the doorstep because you cannot find it.
Holiday checklist complete? Now all you have to do is get to the airport
Everyone's priorities on holiday are different. One person needs eight pairs of shoes, the next fits everything into hand luggage. So treat this list as a guide and adapt it to the length of the trip, the destination and whether you are flying alone or with the whole family. One rule always holds: documents, insurance and medication belong in the bag you keep with you, never in the hold.
Parking is another thing not worth leaving until the day you fly. It pays to compare the car parks at Prague Airport in good time, and our comparison tool is built for exactly that. You can rank parking at Prague Airport by price, distance and rating. Pick one, confirm the booking, and arrive on the day without the rush.
Booking a car park is the one item missing from a lot of travellers' checklists. Add it right now and tick it straight off. With our comparison tool, a space near the airport is booked inside a minute.
