Journal/diary writing while traveling
 

What tools are must haves for you if you keep a travel journal or log?

pen and notebook

Yup, a pen and a notebook, that's it. If you have a laptop with you, that could be handy as well, but a notebook is so much easier. You can sit at a café watching the action and catching up on your journal.

It's a great way to record your trip!

I like to choose a notebook that has a built-in pocket--great for saving receipts, ticket stubs, and other realia.

We bought one of those digital voice recorders and it works great. We've had ours for several years and my husband also uses it for meeting notes, etc. We recently bought one for our nephew that has a capacity of 16 hrs (that's alot) on sale for under $30.

The first trip we took abraod with kids, about 5 years ago when they were 13 & 10, we started a family diary - at breakfast each day, we each had to write a page about what we had done the day before. This was aimed at the 10 year old who had problems with writing [he still does, but that's another story] but turned into good fun for all of us, comparing what each of us enjoyed[ and not] and giving us a record of what we'd done - it's amazing how quickly we forgot stuff.
We only write on one side of the page, then when we are making our album of the trip, we can incorporate the diary in it.
Thanks for staring this thread - it's fun finding out what others do to record their travels.

I make the notes during the day on whatever comes to hand, such as my wife's shopping list or the blank pages in the back of the guidebook. (I just looked in my Green Guide for Paris and see that I wrote "Viollet-le-Duc restored the crypt and chappells du chevet dans un aspect plus proche de celui du XIIe siècle." Two languages in one sentence, LOL. I think I was at Saint-Denis. And there is another one that is even odder: "Louis XVI--huge hands and small head." I have no idea what that was about.)

In the evenings, I write the journal on a laptop. It is a wonderful way to recollect what I saw and felt.

Anselm

We do sketch logs. It's a good way to really see something, trying to draw it. Not especially good when you're rushed, I have many half-finished sketches of . . . what is that? :D

I don't take a laptop - I email myself. There's an internet place near where I rent a flat where I buy blocks of time so I use that.

ballpoint pen and 3x5 spiral notebook. sandwich size ziplock to store receipts, tickets stubs, business cards. supplement w/ purchased postcards.

Bring along a writer to do the actual writing. Writers will work for dirt, mostly, and provide a professional product while you spend your time on the experience, not fussing with nouns and verbs.

If this is beyond your budget, you can select from pre-written journals at any library or bookstore. These can be custom fitted. Feeling refined and perceptive in Italy -- How about *Italian Hours*? Into partying? How about *On the Road*?

If you absolutely must do it yourself, the previous posters' advice is invaluable.

Laptop so you can share it with Fodoristas as you go.

Suze, mine is similar. The ziploc bag for receipts and a pocket sized 3 ring binder (approx. 3"x5") for the journal. I write on one side only. If I need to add anything later, it can go on the facing page or I can add a page.

My girls keep journals also, and have used everything from notebooks to laptop (when we have it with us) to sketchbooks, to dictating on a small tape player (I later helped transcribe).

It's also nice to keep track of the newsy emails we sometimes send to relatives back home.

I made a book of our 2003 trip to Central Europe using www.shutterfly.com, and it turned out so well that I hope to do one for each of our major trips (will have to do some scanning, as it is only this year that I have gone to all digital on our trips - and I still miss film).

Mailing postcards to yourself at home is another fun option.

Moleskin - not the blister stuff... the writing stuff! http://www.moleskine.com/eng/
Available at most art stores world-wide and pretty heavy archival paper. I used a pilot razor point and it didn't bleed through to the other side of page.

I also love the water-proof products put out by this company, and I think you can write on this stuff with just about any pen/pencil types:
http://www.riteintherain.com/notebooks.html

Two and a half years ago, when I took an early retirement and moved back to Europe to be a vagabond for a while (as long as I still can) I started a Retirement Travelogue (travelling through retirement kind of thing - a special kind of travel) and I made notes about my impressions of areas, things, people, memories. I noticed that I tended to switch the language I wrote in the longer I was domiciled in one place, so now it is a volapueck of my particular brand of English, Swedish, German, Polish with some Spanish, Italian and french threw in for good (or bad) measure. As such not useful to share with anybody on toto, though fun for me to review it once a year or so, when it is raining and life takes an occassional slower turn ...
But I can sometimes share parts of it :-)

aah, forgot to mention: I use my laptop.

Idodone:
I've kept an individual journal for every journey since 1946. They fill a significant shelf on my book cases. I use small notebooks (usually up to 100 pages, but a typical three or four week trip fills a good portion of the book).

Since I'm a published writer, I do not labor over grammar, spelling, etc...none of my former editors ever see these journals,thank godness!

I find that writing in the journal, religiously, every day, preferably prepapring to hit the bed after a long, meaningful day. Every few days, I read the contents to my wife, and she will rmin me what I've missed, overstated, understated, etc.

The greatest joy I have is reading the journals from time to time, many times several years after the trip. Whenever, friends or relatives are heading for any of these places, I let them read the journals but insist on getting them back before they leave on the trip. haven't lost one yet.

Stu T.

I keep a daily journal, anyway, so I usually just use the notebook or blank book that is that period's journal to record what I saw/did/experienced. I find that, since I write every day (like Stu T. had mentioned), I am that much more disciplined when it comes to writing up what happened on any particular day of my travels. One tip: make sure, if you're going to write it longhand, that you have a pen that is comfortable <i>to you</i>. And one with plenty of ink. I say this because I once bought a packet of gel pens in assorted colours for a long road trip, intending on doing every day in a different colour. About half of the pack were dried up when I tried to use them, and those that weren't did not feel comfortable after the first ten minutes. Since my entries were very long (sometimes upwards of ten or twelve written pages front and back), my wrist would cramp and I would not look forward to having to do the next day's entry the following night. Test a LOT of pens before you begin your travel journal, and buy multiples of the best one.

A previous poster listed a digital voice recorder; I took a micro-cassette recorder (voice-activated) with me on my first trip to Europe, and without it, I would've never known what I'd taken pictures of. Often I would point and shoot, then whip out the ol' cassette recorder, speak into it what information I could ('This is L'Hotel des Invalides, picture number 27), and continue on. I also found that, quite often, I'd get background noises and just general 'signs of life' on these tapes, so they're invaluable to me.

One last thing: get into the habit of picking up a business card from every place you stop into that has them. Loads of people keep receipts or ticket stubs or even Coke bottles in a foreign language, but few remember to take business cards. They're invaluable, too, when preparing your journal, because inevitably you'll say 'What was the name of that purple restaurant that was beside that cheese shop in Paris?' With the business card, you're more likely to remember it.

Lots of times I take digital pictures of historical markers or explanatory signs of things that we see. Later I have this &quot;write up&quot; as I prepare a journal or a photo caption.

I even shoot the sign on the door of an establishment - often has name, hours, address and even phone number/email. Then it's right with my photos when I'm trying to id something. This works especially if it's somewhere that was closed or if we did not go inside.

When I was in Vienna over New Years, I took a photo at a church of the posted Mass times for the upcoming January 1 holy day. I was able to go back and check my picture (and do some necessary translation with my dictionary) and return for the services.

noe847, you have made me feel so much better! (LOL) I thought I was the only one who took pictures of signs! When I was taking friends of mine round Ireland in April, one of them said to me &quot;Why waste room on your memory card taking pictures of the signs? It's just foolish.&quot; Nonono, it's actually very handy, particularly in places where one doesn't speak the language. Sure, I could go refer to a guide book later for some of the major places, but why bother, when I'm there, have the room, and have the camera to do it?

When my best friend and I do roadtrips, we take pictures of all the junctions, intersections and route markers we find so that we can go back later and highlight where all we drove on a cheap map.

lazuliangel, memory cards are (relatively) cheap - and very portable. I think they're an excellent way to keep track of information. I take pictures of signs on a hike also, so I can easily identify what the scenery is later. Oh, and signs when I'm entering a town/state. The digital images are numbered and dated, and really help give context to the neighboring pictures. And they're filed right with the pictures on the computer.

Hey...I'll bet we all take shots of signs, etc...I know I do..and boy, they come in handy when compiling an album, or adding titles on the digital show.

Stu T.

volapueck?????

Vera

Stu T. -- I'll bite, would I know what you've written?
((c))

I took a pen and notebook but in retrospect, with all the trip updates I was posting online, I wished I had taken a small laptop so I could write my digital updates on trains and during other &quot;down times&quot;. There are a ton of wifi locations in Europe that would have saved me money from spending all that time in web cafe's writing updates as well.

I take a laptop and a legal pad/portfolio folder with a pen loop. The laptop is for downloading the day's photos... because I too am a fan of taking pictures of signs! Yay, I'm not alone!

(I was lucky enough to go to northern Thailand for my honeymoon. If it hadn't been for incessant sign photography, the whole thing would have been a blur by the time I got home. But a girl can cram a memory card chock full that way, so the nightly data dump is crucial.)

The legal pad is my travel journal, because I don't like carrying the laptop while touring. One side of the page only, so when I'm home I can bind the finished pages and mount the &quot;book&quot; in the back of my scrapbook.

Vera

Volapueck was (is?) an artificial language composed - as far as I know - of many languages. I have never heard any volapueck used (unlike esperanto with which I played as a child, although it was most popular during my mother's childhood, but I was a strange child, lol), but the word itself was often used as a synonym of an intelligible mixture of languages or generally as something hard to understand.