By Lakshmi:

Who?  Anyone who loves to travel will appreciate a store chock full of travel accessories and gadgets that you never even knew existed!

What? Flight001, a travel products store with locations across the US, Australia and Singapore.  The store also offers a robust collection of products on its website at  http://www.flight001.com/

How? We actually happened about the West Village store during one of our routine walks around Greenwich Village.  This Manhattan outpost is located at

96 Greenwich Avenue
New York, NY 10011
P: 212.989.0001

Why?  As suggested by our site name, we are indeed paupers without travel.  So, does it come as any surprise that a store dedicated to travel and travel accessories would hold tremendous appeal to us?  As soon as we stepped in through the doors, we were quite drawn by the eclectic product collection.  Sure there were the usual offerings like suitcases and travel books and power converters.  But going beyond that were several extremely functional offerings.  Little leaves of soap to carry with you on your travels, grids for storing all your electronics and wires, little credit card size maps of various locations, bags in an assortment of shapes and sizes to pack compactly, creative lunch boxes and much much more.

We have since been to the store multiple times and have picked up cute but very functional cleaning supplies, credit card sized maps of the various boroughs in NYC and a carry on bag with a giant Vespa scooter on the front.

Even if you have no plans or need for anything specific, a walk through Flight001 can give you a lot of ideas to travel compactly.  And given that we believe in traveling with just carry ons, the store has already enriched us with plenty of ideas.