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Coffee Break: Easy Travel Tote

woman carries large teal blue "easy tote" from Cuyana; she is wearing an all-denim outfit, a brown hat, and standing in front of what looks to be an airplane runway with an airplane taking off behind her

I don't think we've featured the Easy Travel Tote from reader favorite brand Cuyana before, but it looks great if you're on the hunt for a very large weekender. It's also just been released in three new colors: “deep ocean” (pictured), navy, and a stone/pebble colorblocked option.

I like that it has multiple pockets, a key clip, a secure zipper closure and interior snaps to pair with the brand's other items, like the organizational System Flap Bag or System Zipper Pouch. It's also nice that the base is removable.

Reviews are glowing, with comments like “finally THE travel bag,” and “chic and resourceful.”

The bag is $428; you can also add monogramming for an extra $15 (final sale).

Sales of note for 12.2.24 (Happy Cyber Monday!!)

113 Comments

  1. With hats, especially Ascot or Derby hats, is there a such thing as too much? And are there any documentaries of fascinators and similar hats? I feel like it’s just a trip to Michael’s and a hot glue gun but obviously it’s in a much higher plane.

    I have a party for a scientist friend who works at a planetarium. You know half the women there will show up in homemade solar system hats. Which I think is a good thing.

  2. Nope, not for me. It’s too HUGE! The display photo shows an airplane taking off in the background, but the dimensions technically exceed those permitted for carry-on baggage (although you could probably squish the soft sides into one of those measuring boxes at the airport gate). The glowing reviews are based on only four (4) reviews — not enough reviews to get feel for whether these bags are accepted by airlines. I also don’t see an easy way to carry this bag attached to a rolling bag.

    1. The problem with a bag this big is that if you actually filled it all the way up, it would be way too heavy to comfortably carry.

    2. Yeah I was going to say, if you tried to get on an airplane with this as your personal item you’d be denied boarding. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But it’s GIANT!

    3. this isn’t the kind of bag you take on a plane though — it’s a weekender. meant for driving somewhere for a weekend away like your beach house or boyfriend’s house. most weekenders won’t fit on a plane or work for that kind of travel.

      2. This is exactly the kind of bag I need for weekends at my boyfriend’s house, but I would only buy such a bag at a much lower price point. I have large bags that I currently use, but they are all “floppy” bags and having a flat bottom and structure would make dealing with my things over the weekend easier and neater.

    4. What are the rules for a large bag that isn’t stuffed? I have an LLBean L (maybe XL) duffel. Packed with 3 small packing cubes, can I have it as a carryon? It would fit into the size it needs to (and I wouldn’t have to gate-check it). I’m emptying out some things from my parents’ house (soft items mainly or sentimental ones) and would check it if full but only need that one-way. Bring an Ikea bag in a smaller bag (not sure how durable)? Just mail a file box? IDK how to handle and don’t want to buy new luggage just for this.

    5. I’m going to disagree here, the actual dimensions aren’t that big and this looks like the perfect size for a personal item on a plane. I wouldn’t stuff it to the max but I like having a bag big enough to have some room. I wish I hadn’t cooked because now I’m just debating what color.

    6. It’s too big to have only a short shoulder strap. I don’t think of weekenders as something to take on a flight (so weird photo), but you still need to be able to carry things comfortably.

    2. I kind of want the hat. (Not the bag, I agree with the too big/heavy to be practical comments)

      1. I can’t tell if this is sarcasm because the photo so clearly looks like the old “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiago?” logo.

      1. Agree with the Carmen San Diego vibe! And if you look at the video on the company site it looks like she is straining to lift the bag at its max fullness. Good color and great that it zips closed, but I agree it’s too big unless driving and trying to fit all things into one single bag for some reason.

  4. What would you call the section on your resume that is conference panels you’ve been on + 1 local interview?

    4. Public appearances (assuming that the conferences are not invitation-only).

  6. A weird book request thread, but I’m on vacation next week and I’m looking for some fiction books in which the main character has a cool job that’s discussed in the book! Female main characters are a plus but not required!

    I generally prefer thrillers, mysteries, or chick lit / beach reads but open to anything as long as it’s not fantasy, sci fi, or smut.

    1. The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva is about an art restorer (male) who is also an Israeli spy. Two cool jobs for the price of one.

      I just finished The Dictionary of Lost Words and it’s about the development of the Oxford English Dictionary. The (female) main character is the daughter of one of the men working on the project and eventually works on it herself, which is a pretty cool job, albeit 100 or so years ago.

      Of course there are the game developers in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I liked it but I know a lot of people on here hated it.

      1. ooh that series sounds good!

        we read T&T&T in my book club and everyone else loved it! I liked it okay but couldn’t get over how insufferable I found the main character

      2. I just discovered the Dan Silva Gabriel Allon series while browsing paperbacks in a thrift shop at the beach. I’m in the middle of “The English Assassin,” and so far so good — interesting characters and plot, but not too heavy a lift for a holiday read.

        For a non-fiction recommendation, the newly-published book about the Challenger disaster was an amazing read. (The author also wrote the book that was the basis for the Chernobyl mini series; I promptly ordered that book, too.)

        Enjoy!

    2. You want Anna Pitoniak! The Helsinki Affair (espionage) or Necessary People (television news).

      Also maybe The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger (one of the main characters is a working mom who’s a medical researcher).

    4. It is non-fiction and more of a memoir but Braiding Sweetgrass, by a native woman who teaches ecology and her experiences and exploration of myths.

    5. Oh fun request!

      The first thing that came to mind is Lessons in Chemistry – I actually didn’t love that book, but it’s focused on a female scientist and her career is a huge plot point.

      Other ideas: The Women (nurse in the Vietnam war), The Red Lotus (ER doctor; her career isn’t a huge plot point but the larger hospital setting is),The Expats and its sequels (CIA agent turned SAHM turned freelance spy), Bel Canto (opera singer), Tom Lake (retired actress), The Bodyguard (bodyguard/private security for ultra rich people), the Stella Rimington novels (female MI-5 agent), Carrie Soto is Back (pro tennis player).

      1. I really hated Lessons in Chemistry, tbh, and wasn’t sure why everyone around me was stanning it.

        2. I thought it was incredibly authentic, and that’s why I did not enjoy it. I mostly read to escape real life.

          1. Even the part where a four-year-old embraces atheism and makes a religious leader question everything? My eyes rolled out of my head. And I’m an atheist!

    6. The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See. The women are divers. It’s a friendship story, and I learned a tremendous amount about the history of Korea reading it.

      1. +1 to this and also Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (video game design). I’m not into video games at all and I thought aspects of this book were great.

    7. i feel like only romance readers are allowed to call their preferred reading smut

      1. Well I enjoy romance / smut but this multigenerational family vacation is not the time nor place for it! I don’t need my 87 year old great aunt or my several young cousins to see me reading smut!

      2. I don’t mind smut but I cannot stand badly written smut, and that seems to be like 99% of it.

        1. now i’m curious — who are you reading? if it’s 50 shades of gray or CoHo that doesn’t count

    8. Romantic Comedy is one of my favorites and is largely centered on the main characters job (writer for a fictionalized version of SNL). Definite romantic angle but it’s not smut. Excavations was a 3-star read for me, but it’s about a group of mostly female archeologists on a dig in Greece, which is fun and different. Musical Chairs is about a violinist! And, a couple of Taylor Jenkins Reid books would fit this– Daisy Jones about a rock star, Carrie Soto is Back about a tennis player.

      1. Also Elissa Sussman’s books – Funny You Should ask is about a journalist and Once More with Feeling is about a pop star.

        Also plugging my beloved Janet Evanovich – I’ve been reading about Stephanie Plum the bounty hunter since middle school!

        1. Somebody here was telling me about Fox and O’Hare by Janet Evanovich and they’re very fun!

    10. – Olga Dies Dreaming (wedding planner to the wealthy/ elite)
      – You Are Here (female MC is a copy editor, male MC is a geography teacher)
      – Nora Goes Off Script (screenwriter)
      – Since We Fell (journalist)
      – A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (female MC is a florist, male MC is a musician) (but there is some magical realism)
      – The Lager Queen of Minnesota (brewer)
      – The Frozen River (midwife)
      – The Personal Librarian (JP Morgan’s personal librarian)
      – Warrior Girl Unearthed (museum intern, working to repatriot Native American remains)
      – Romantic Comedy (SNL writer)

    11. Some older suggestions: Up the Down Staircase is a classic funny-tragic book about a newly minted public school teacher, and the Amelia Peabody series is about archaeologists in late 1800s/early 1900s Egypt. Perfect beach/vacation reads.

      1. Love, love, love Amelia Peabody! The Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths is also about a mystery-solving female archeologist (contemporary).

  7. Someone I know, but not well, bought 4 tickets to a sought-after concert but only needs 2. She told me this directly so I asked her if I could buy the other two from her and she’s hoping to basically get as much money as possible. I have the money to pay to watch the show and really want to go, but there is also an amount where it’s just ridiculous and I don’t want to pay that much. What would be a fair way to determine what to pay when, e.g., she won’t be able to really determine how much she can charge on the market (the stub hub prices have huge ranges, especially at the top end where tickets are not selling) and she doesn’t have a good sense of what type of fees will be taken out by the reseller? This gets awkward because I don’t want there to be bad feelings on either side (I see her maybe once every two months at group get togethers) and because if I buy them, I will be standing right next to her at the show and will also be able to see the face value of the tickets. Any suggestions?

    1. If she is trying to sell the tickets above face value, you should buy tickets from someone else.

    2. Oh man, if this is for Taylor Swift I sympathize, I would pay anything to see her.

      But I don’t think it’s fair for the seller to make a profit. Ask her what she paid for them.

      1. So I would never do this because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered, and also, like the other commenter, I find it gross. BUT fair doesn’t really factor into it. The tickets are hers and she owns them. She can charge whatever she thinks she can get. You can offer to pay what they are worth to you.

        3. It’s actually illegal where I am to resell tickets on Ticketmaster for more than face value!

      2. OP asked her to buy them though, so it’s entirely possible her original plan was to sell on a reseller site. OP doesn’t have any right to insist the friend give her the tickets at face value when the friend had been planning to sell at a the market rate they’re going for on Stub Hub. We can debate whether reseller culture should be a thing (I agree it’s gross). But it wouldn’t be appropriate to insist someone sell us their NVIDIA stock at the price they payed for it 6 months ago, even if it’s worth a lot more now. The same is true here.

          1. Yes she did. She literally says in the second line “so I asked if I could buy them.”

          2. She didn’t ask the friend to buy them for her, though. Friend bought them and then she asked. That’s different.

        2. No. OP asked to buy the tickets from her. I.e., the friend could have been planning to sell them on Stubhub at the resale value, so it is entitled of OP to insist on getting well below that.

    3. if she bought extra with the purpose of reselling.. (gross) – I would tell her you’re willing to pay $x – she can list them & see if she gets $$$$. $x = like low end of stub hub – you’re both saving on fees.

    4. Friend should sell her tickets on a reseller site. Then you should separately buy your own. That’s how you will each reach true market value.

    5. Check what it would cost you to buy tickets on a reseller site. If friend’s price isn’t at least 10%-15% beneath that, just buy from the reseller site. It’s not worth the potential tension and awkwardness of bargaining.

      I’d rather have a reseller make money off of me than feel like a friend was making money off of me, which will likely lead to resentment.

    6. Paying my friend a thousand for a ticket that says two hundred on the stub would make me very, very angry. If she wants to basically mark up the way a reseller does, then she can sell the tickets online (this may very well have been her plan before you asked). If her price is what a reseller would charge, there’s no reason at all to buy from her vs just getting on stub hub. It feels like she’s made it clear she isn’t trying to sell them to you at face value, and it will be incredibly awkward (and probably read as entitled) if you try to convince her to sell for less than she wants to sell for. Cut your losses and just buy online if tickets are available.

      You’re not entitled to her selling you the tickets at face value when she views them as a commodity and wants to get full resell value for them. Healthy boundaries for you would be buying at her price or walking away from the price if it’s too high (which I would absolutely do).

    7. Obviously this depends on what you can afford.

      One sensible way to go about it is you pay double face value: she goes for free and you aren’t being charged 5x face value.

      If 2x face value is higher than what the reseller site charges, just buy your tickets there and she can sell them for whatever she wants.

      If 2x face value is well under even the low end of the reseller site range, I would just wait it out. Tell her that you will be the backup buyer if she can’t offload them.

    8. You can usually find the face value of the tickets online anyway. Most media outlets report the price of the big shows. I would look at stubhub and set your max price and tell her. Either she will sell them to you at that price or you can just buy them from someone else. I personally wouldn’t pay tons over asking and I go to concerts all the time. I’ve seen Adele at face value and Beyoncé at face value. All sold out shows that didn’t cost thousands of dollars because that’s absurd to me. She risks not being able to sell her tickets at all because those resellers are often more experienced at gaming the system anyway.

    9. Huh. Where I live, black marketeering tickets is illegal. You cannot sell a ticket above the venue’s price. Scandi, in case it’s relevant for OP. I would not like to buy illegal tickets, but YMMV.

      2. That’s why Taylor’s European shows are filling up with Americans. It was nearly impossible to get face value tickets here because scalpers swooped in and bought them all.

    10. Have her do her research and name the price she wants for them. You can then buy them from her at that price or not. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.

    11. Unless you know her to be dishonest, why wouldn’t you just ask her what she paid and pay her that? I understand not wanting her to profit from the transaction with you, but if she had to pay above facevalue for the tickets, it seems reasonable to reimburse her the rate she paid.

    12. This thread is bananas. You just stop and don’t ask. Your friend is entitled to sell her tickets for market value. You have zero standing here and risk damaging the friendship.

  8. Possibly unicorn bag hunt. Looking for a bag that fits both my travel coffee and water mugs (both 12 ounces), wallet, and a book and some miscellaneous but is not ridiculously large and which closes on top because of a subway/transit commute. Will not need to fit a laptop since I don’t take it with me. I had the Dagne Dover and gave it away because it was too big and if I had to go out after work, it took up too much room.

    1. I have a medium zip top nylon bag from LL Bean that might work. I can fit my thermos of water and snacks in to as well as all my purse/handbag stuff and my kindle and my planner. It’s lightweight. I use it for days I spend running from medical appointment to medical appointment at a large academic hospital. I think it’s called the everyday tote or something like that. I have it in bright blue but it comes in more sedate colors as well.

    2. Cuyana zipper tote for something more polished. Fjällräven Kånken Totepack Mini for something more casual.

    3. Look at MZ Wallace – the Crosby magazine tote, or the Chelsea everyday bag (the latter might be too big for your goals). Both have external pockets that could hold your mugs.

    5. You might consider a Vail or North/South tote from Tumi, although they are made from leather (so possibly heavy and prone to scratching) and a bit pricey.

  9. I’m trying to lose weight and would love ideas for afternoon snacks when I am tired and have the munchies. Am getting pretty bored with fruits and veggies and yogurt when what I really want is crackers and M&Ms, ugh.

    1. What about pretzels and hummus (pretzel thins even), cottage cheese with fruit or savory mix ins, babybels (Trader Joes has lots of cheese snacks), or apple slices with peanut butter?

    2. I am the last person on the planet to discover this, but I made crispy chickpeas in a frying pan last week, and it was really delicious! I am a potato chip fan, and they scratched that itch for me. I used salt, pepper and some nutritional yeast to flavor them. I basically followed the directions here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx_gg1Eq7C0

    3. I do cottage cheese + salt/pepper, a bit of olive oil, and dip in crackers. As long as you limit the number of crackers it is health adjacent.

    4. Whole wheat crackers with a yogurt-based dip (Trader Joe’s everything but the bagel dip) or a bean dip? I also find rice crackers much more filling than regular crackers if a small portion would scratch that itch.

    5. A milky iced coffee does it for me. Not too sweet. A good dose of milk for protein.

    7. i always either need more protein or fiber for the day so my answers may be weird, but they’re all really good for satiety!
      – protein bar like barebells, built, quest
      – fiber one brownie bar — the great value knockoffs are the best
      – air-popped popcorn with avocado oil spray and seasonings (you could even throw a small amount of choc chips or m&ms before serving if you like the salty/sweet thing)
      – protein ice cream ninja creami
      – overnight oats with chia
      – oatmeal in general is great if you need an afternoon snack and can do it in a microwave – big serving that can be as dessert-like as you want it to be
      – lazy girl quesadilla – high fiber tortilla folded in half with cheese inside and nuked for 30 seconds. can dip into salsa or guac.
      – protein chips like quest
      – hummus with carrots

    8. I love to snack on crackers and M&Ms, and nuts scratch that itch for me – I love pistachios especiallyl.

    9. Crispy chickpeas (I make from dried, then crisp in the oven; haven’t tried the pan method posted above)
      Wasabi peas
      Hard boiled eggs
      Turkey and cheese rollups
      Cottage cheese
      Fruit with nut butter

    10. How about a trail mix with M&Ms, mini pretzels, peanuts, dried fruit like raisins, etc? That way you are getting protein and fiber with your M&Ms.

    11. popcorn
      celery, carrots, grape tomatoes, and bell pepper strips dipped in super good quality hummus
      Kind bars
      low salt sliced deli turkey smeared with a bit of mayonnaise and/or mustard and rolled up in a tube for serving
      a hug mug of black English tea with lots of milk
      a cup of cafe au lait (if you can tolerate caffeine in the afternoons)
      frozen organic blueberries; frozen red-skinned grapes
      Lieber brand rice cakes (they are nicely thin, not thick and styrofoamy) topped with: cottage cheese, hummus plus a teaspoon of sunflower seeds, a slice of low-salt deli turkey and a smear of mustard or mayonnaise, peanut butter, smashed avocado with salt and pepper
      And every once in a while (twice a month, say), pour out some peanut M&Ms into a small bowl and savor!

    12. Frosted mini wheats, eaten dry. I once read an article where this was the recommended snacks for an IT team because it wasn’t messy (so wouldn’t get all over the equipment) but also had a lot of fiber and a touch of sweet.

    13. Protein shakes!! The Premier Protein or Fairlife chocolate shakes will scratch your M&Ms cravings.

      1. +1. If I’m getting hungry, it’s time to take a half hour break and prep dinner on WFH days.

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