Travel Journaling: Making a Perfect Memento of Your Trip

Whether you travel a lot or are about to embark on a once in a lifetime vacation, a travel journal is an excellent souvenir of your trip. But it doesn’t have to be just a chronicle of your daily activities, nor do you have to have great writing skills to write a travel account that you’ll want to read again and again. If you pay attention to detail and include descriptions of sights, sounds, tastes, and smells, you can have a journal that reads more like a travel memoir. You can also use your journal as a great way to keep scraps from your trip, such as ticket stubs, restaurant napkins, anything that will remind you of something amazing that you saw or ate during your trip.

Choosing the Format: Paper or Internet

A paper journal is great because you can take it with you on your travels and jot in it whenever the mood strikes. Its downside is that if your writing is illegible, it’s not going to be easy to read.

If you choose a paper journal, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Choose a journal with acid- and lignin-free paper. That will keep the pages from yellowing and the writing from fading, which will make your journal last even longer. Also, you may want to bring along a glue stick on your travels so you can paste in little mementos. The glue stick should be made especially for scrapbooks and acid-free paper to protect the paper.

You can also buy a journal in keeping with the theme of your trip. Many paper journals are specifically designed as travel journals, but you can find other designs that are also appropriate. For a six-week study trip to the British Isles, for example, I found a journal with Celtic knots all over it. It was especially appropriate when I went to Ireland, and it’s one of the best souvenirs of my trip.

An online journal has the advantage that you can share it with others, it’s easy to read, and quicker to write, since you type everything.

You can also customize the look of your journal to coincide with wherever you’re traveling. For example, I am now living in Germany for a few years, so my online travel journal records all the trips I take around Europe, with links to online photo albums. I have the journal decorated with a German flag. It’s easy for me to share this journal with friends and family back in the United States, and they have easy access to my pictures, which enhances my travel accounts. The online journal also has an infinite amount of space, which is great because I won’t have to keep around a lot of paper journals.

The disadvantage, of course, is that you may not have Internet access everywhere you go. In that case, you should scribble down notes of things you wish to type up in your trip report when you get home. I’ve jotted down notes on napkins and hotel stationary. If I tried to remember every aspect of my trip once I got home, I would miss a lot. It’s important to write things down when they’re fresh in your mind, at the end of each day before bed, if possible.

In the case of online journals, you can buy a membership in one with many tools and design options or use more basic ones for free. Here are some of the free ones:

• livejournal.com – a popular site.
• deadjournal.com – based on Live Journal but with a darker theme.
• greatestjournal.com.
• journalscape.com

With these sites, you have the option of making entries public, private, or friends only. The friends only option is readable only to other people who subscribe to the site and have you listed as a friend or who have the password that you created to protect your entries.

What Should You Record? Use All Your Senses

If you’re really not sure how to begin recording your trip, think about what really matters to you. Did the Muslim call to prayer you heard in Istanbul five times a day move you? Describe its sound. Did you have an unforgettable meal in Amsterdam? Tell what you ate and describe the taste, texture, and smell of the food. When you describe what museums you visited or activities you did, use all your senses to depict the scenes. What colors surrounded you? What plants? Was it sunny and warm or chilly and rainy? Even if you’re the only person who will ever read the journal, write as if you’re describing these things to a person who has never been there. Write about any interesting people you encounter, and if what made them memorable is what they wore or what they said. Using all your senses to describe your trip will help you remember more details of your vacation so that you can recall even the simplest things years later. I still remember a very brief conversation that I had with a jolly old Irishman in Dublin six years ago. It’s something I might have forgotten if I hadn’t written about it in my journal. Something about the man’s demeanor and accent struck me enough to write about it, so I now have this pleasant memory of my short conversation with him.

If you can, record the names of restaurants where you ate, the hotel where you stayed, or the people that you met, and any snippets of the language you picked up. It makes the accounts of your travel experiences much more complete.

If you know a quote that makes you think of your destination, include that in your journal. I wrote a lot of blessings in my journal during the four days I spent in Ireland. You can also include any local slang you come across. My journal is filled with British slang I picked up during the summer of my study abroad. Anything funny or strange that you see is fair game too. I’ll never forget the “Turkish Viagra” that I saw at the Istanbul Spice Bazaar.