What to Bring, and What to Leave at Home

Packing for this country is decided by three things, and none of them is fashion. It is the stone underfoot, the gap between the city and the mountains, and the wind.

Get those three right and the rest of the case is ordinary holiday clothing. Get them wrong and you spend the trip buying a scarf and regretting your shoes.

Start with the shoes

Bring shoes you can walk on old stone in for hours. The walled city is historic paving, the villages are the same idea steeper, and thin soles are punished by both.

One comfortable pair for walking and one pair for the evening is genuinely enough. A third pair is usually a passenger in the suitcase.

The mountains are colder

The city and the mountains are not the same climate. A regional day can be considerably cooler than the morning you left, especially once the sun is off the slope.

Pack an extra layer for that part of the trip even in a warm month. It weighs almost nothing and it is the difference between staying out and going back to the car.

Layers rather than one big coat

Layers work better here than a single heavy coat, because the temperature moves through the day rather than settling. A light windproof layer earns its space.

The wind is the reason. A coat the wind goes straight through is warm indoors and useless on the seafront.

Summer is about cover

In the hot months the useful items are a hat, sun cover, sunglasses and a bottle you refill. The rest is about the shape of the day rather than the suitcase.

Summer here is planned around the middle of the day rather than through it. Pack for early mornings and late evenings, because that is when you will be outside.

Something to cover with

Daily life needs no particular modesty. Mosques do: cover shoulders and knees, and women cover their hair, which our etiquette page explains properly.

A light scarf in the day bag solves this without planning. It is also useful in wind, in sun and on a cold evening, which is a good return for one item.

A small bag for the day

Whatever the suitcase is, the day needs a small bag: water, a layer, the scarf, cash, the phone and a charger. That is the entire list.

Keep it small enough to carry uphill without thinking about it. Every village worth walking around involves some version of uphill.

Power

Bring a universal adapter and you have solved the socket question without checking anything. Add a power bank, because a regional day with the camera and the map running is hard on a phone.

If you want charging in the car, ask us or ask the driver rather than assuming. It is a normal question with a quick answer.

Anything you take regularly

Bring what you take regularly in its own packaging, and enough of it for the whole trip plus a couple of spare days. We will not tell you that a particular product is on a shelf in your week, because we cannot check that.

The same rule covers contact lens solution, a specific brand of anything, and the small items people assume they will find. Bring them and be pleasantly wrong.

The suitcase itself

A large hard case is fine for a city stay. It is much less fine on the stairs of a mountain guesthouse, or in a car boot that also holds three other people’s luggage.

If your trip goes out to the regions, pack a smaller case than you think you need. You will be carrying it further than the distance from the taxi to reception.

What to leave at home

The formal clothes you are packing in case, the second heavy coat, and the shoes you have never walked far in. None of them earn their space.

Leave the long list too. Once the shoes, the layers and the scarf are in, the rest of this is ordinary packing for the season you chose.