How to Keep a Travel Diary

You planned a great trip. The pictures you took are wonderful, and you loved the food and atmosphere. To have a record and memory of the places where you took your best photos, drank the best drinks and ate the best meals, keep track of it all in a travel diary. Here are some great ways to make your travel diary the perfect accessory for your trip.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Travel diary
• Pencil
• Pen
• Glue stick

1. Pick your diary to match your needs! Choosing your travel diary is a personal thing. It can be anything from a simple spiral notebook to a bound journal. Pick something that will be easy to carry around with you, will not be intrusive to your surroundings and will have enough room to handle your entire trip. I am partial to a notebook that’s about 5½" x 7½" , fits in my bag, and has no lines on the paper.
2. Start your travel diary right away. Use it to jot down your impressions, descriptions and funny stories. Was the cab ride to the airport particularly exciting? Did you almost miss your plane? Write down what you packed in your luggage and who traveled with you.
3. Keep those ticket stubs! Keep your ticket stubs and receipts. Use the glue stick to attach them to your diary in the appropriate places. This will help you remember restaurants, hotels and attractions. Write down what struck you as great. The food, the people, the view—anything and everything can go into your diary.
4. Make notes of the pictures you’ve taken and where. Was there anything special about one of them? Did you take pictures of your traveling companions, and if so, where was you and what were you all doing? Make a note of why you took a special snapshot.
5. Sketching can jog the memories! Sketch what you see if you can. Not everyone can be an artist, but remember, this is so you’ll remember something special. If you can’t draw a straight line, buy postcards and put them into your diary as a remembrance. Describe what you see. How blue was the sky today? What colors were the most vibrant in the market? What did the cathedral look like? Words can be just as powerful as pictures when describing a scene.
6. The most important step in keeping a travel diary is actually doing it. Make sure to set aside some time each day, in the morning or evening, to fill in whatever you can of that day’s events. Taking your diary with you to record events along the way may seem like an impossible task, but you’ll be surprised at how easy it gets as you travel.

Tips & Warnings

• Use your travel diary to complete your scrapbook. With the details written there, along with your special notes and tokens you kept glued inside, your scrapbook of pictures and memorabilia will be even better.
• Pass your Diary on to a friend planning on traveling to the same area. Your tips and information can be very helpful to them.