Traveling, even for those who do it a lot, is always something very exciting that allows you to explore new parts of the world, meet new people, see beautiful places and taste delicious food. All of these fantastic memories deserve to be captured and relieved, and the perfect place to keep these memories alive is to create a travel journal.
I have been keeping a travel journal for many years now, and have filled several notebooks with my adventures, thoughts and pictures from all around the world. I love going through my old travel journals and reminiscing about my previous travels, how I felt on those days and all the amazing things I saw and discovered. My travel journals are definitely some of my most precious belongings!
In this post, I will guide you through all the steps needed to make your very own travel journal, one that fits your needs and wants, and help you to create the perfect travel diary that records all of your beautiful memories and experiences.
What is a travel journal?
A travel journal is a personal record of your travel experiences, a place to document what you want to remember, to capture memories of your trips. It is so very personal that it can come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no one size fits all when it comes to journaling in general, and especially travel journaling.
Depending on what you want it to be, look and feel like, a travel journal could be a photo album, a paper or digital notebook, a sketchbook or even a blog. It can help you plan your trip or reflect on it, it can hold your travel information or just sum up your days. It is up to you!
Why keep a travel journal?
We do so many amazing things during our trips, that sometimes our memory doesn’t keep up with everything and we tend to forget some names and details of our trips. That’s where a travel journal comes in. Not only is it a great creative outlet, it also helps us to keep our memories of amazing times all in one place.
Whether you travel a lot and want to keep a list of all the places you’ve been to, or you have this bucket-list trip planned in the future and want to remember every single detail of it, a travel journal is the perfect place to keep your memories and feelings alive.
However, with so many possibilities and all the beautiful and seemingly perfect models we see online, keeping a travel journal can seem somewhat of a daunting task, and you might feel discouraged by it. So, keep in mind that the main purpose of it is really to capture your memories, and read on to find out how to create your very own travel diary.
8 Tips to create your Travel Journal
The types of travel journals
To make your personal travel journal, you want to ask yourself first what type of travel journal you want to have. It can be more artistic, more of a written diary, some sort of a scrapbook, or even a digital one.
The possibilities are endless, but here are some ideas to guide you:
- A sketchbook where you draw the highlights of your trip or a summary for each day
- A written diary, that only contains text
- A scrapbook where you stick on the pages all the tickets and flyers you collect throughout your trip
- An online blog
- A physical or digital photo album with or without notes
- A mix of all or part of the above
Don’t be too ambitious
When searching for travel journal inspiration or looking online how to make a travel journal, you will stumble upon some near perfect journals, with detailed drawings, perfect calligraphy and curated images. If this is within your artistic abilities, then by all means go for it! However, if you’ve never had a scrapbook or travel journal, chances are that yours will not look like this. And this is perfectly ok!
When creating your travel journal, keep in mind its main purpose: capturing your memories and keeping them alive. It doesn’t really matter if yours is not as “perfect” as those you see online. Rather, embrace the imperfection of yours and, unless it really brings you joy, aim for something that will satisfy your creative soul but that will also allow you to enjoy every last bit of your trip – you don’t want to spend hours of your trip frustrated over your travel journal!
With this in mind, go over the previous point once again and, once you are ready, prepare for the next step!
What to put in your travel journal
Similar to our first point, it is useful to know what you want to put in your travel journal. This is not really about the type of things you’ll put inside, but rather about the content. You can really do it however you like, but I think that defining more or less its content before going on your trip is always useful.
Here are some ideas of what you can put inside your travel journal:
- day-to-day written account of your wanderings
- weekly recap of your travels
- notes to prepare your trip (packing list, flight and hotel details, language memos, etc.)
- brochures, tickets, scraps of paper and cards
- drawings or paintings of some places you liked the most
- photos
- lists of your highlights
Picking a journal
This is one of my favourite parts, and it really depends on what type of journal you want to have. For example, if you want to illustrate your travels with watercolour, you should definitely pick a notebook that is watercolour-friendly. Also, if you want to create a scrapbook-style travel journal, a softer cover will probably be slightly more compact than a harder one.
It is really up to you at this stage, my only advice would be to try to select something quite light that you can easily carry around everywhere you go and that fits in most of your backpacks or handbags.
When to write in your journal
Ideally, you will want to fill in your travel journal when your memories and feelings are still very fresh, so that you can jot down all the details you’ll want to remember. You can fill in your travel journal every evening after exploring, each morning at a café for the previous day, or at the end of your trip, when you go back home. If you create your travel journal at the end of your trip make sure to write some elements of your trip somewhere or take a lot of pictures so you don’t miss details!
Before your trip: prepare your travel journal
Before you leave on your trip, it can be useful to prepare your travel journal so that you can get a head start on the day you’ll fill it in with your adventures. For instance, I like to put some sort of header indicating the place I’m going to and the date, and I have sometimes made a list of things I wanted to see and do.
You can also add your itinerary, contact information, addresses and other useful things that you’ll need during your trip.
Pack your supplies
Unless you opted for a writing-only travel journal or a digital one, you’ll definitely need some supplies to decorate your travel journal. When you are packing your stuff for your trip, don’t forget to add everything you’ll need to fill in your travel journal, depending on how you want to fill it: coloured pens, stickers, washi tape, paint, glue and scissors, etc.
Set aside some time to write about your trip
Whether you’ve decided to fill in your travel journal each evening, morning or week, you’ll need to set aside some time to actually do it. So, if you tend to have a jam-packed schedule on your trips, don’t forget to have some down time to get creative. I find that it is easier to do that when you’re back at your accommodation in the evening, rather than taking my travel journal and all my supplies while I wander about a new destination, but it is, again, entirely up to you!
I hope these little tips on how to make your travel journal were helpful and useful. Things can feel very overwhelming when you start your creative journey, but by keeping in mind that the main purpose of it is to record your experiences and create amazing memories, rather than having something “perfect” to publish on social media, you’ll enjoy it much more!
