Travel Journals

My wife is not a diary keeper type, but several years ago she started writing journals of our trips, every day. Partly for somethng to do When in France and only English TV is CNN what else do you do., or driving from Atlanta to Charleston, etc.

They are great memories plus help me on these boards. How long we were in Nikko or Kyoto, or Venice.? memory slips away writing does not. They are all still hand written.

Encourage any of you younger folk to do same. You will be glad you did.

t

Travel Journals

phirl--I agree. We had our kids do them for big trips, and we all love looking back at them. Especially the overseas trips since everything is so different from here at home, and seeing it thru the kids eyes is really touching. DD and I have invited my mother to go to France with us this summer (my moms first trip there, so just a girls trip, the 3 of us) and I want all of us to keep journals. You are right also about how memory fades, but when it is written down we can continue the memories. Thanks for the great reminder!

Travel Journals

Re: keeping diaries, my SO saved and duplicated photos of a trip to Europe with her two sons. She then prepared an holiday gift album for each, using the duplicated photos. They loved and appreciated those albums, talking to each other about each photo, where and when, etc.

What a lovely idea, phil! I like to journal, my son and daughter-in-law gave us a Wine Tasting Journal this Christmas so we can keep notes on our wine tasting trips this year. :)

phirl, I agree, keeping a record of your travels and impressions is both something that is fun at the time and special for the future..

We have soooo many Travel journals of trips to Paris and London Argentina, and islands and states that we have visited over the years.. it is fun to sit and look through them and the kids like to go through them too.

Although my two children both have a pretty big stack of their own Travel Journals..

so far, my son has won the contest of who has more, lol...

Thanks for the good advice, phirl. I didn%26#39;t start doing trip journals until just a few years ago. I look forward to reading them years from now, when I%26#39;m sure they%26#39;ll be just as good as photographs in rekindling memories. Just wish I%26#39;d started keeping those journals back in the Club Med days..... Or do I? ;-)

lol, mistletoe!

I hate to think how many we would have if we did it buy wine tasting or food tasting ... omigod... you can%26#39;t go to France or jeez, anywhere these days without these great restaurants , like a place I want to go to in Spain, where you reserve for months ahead, the dinners last 4 hours and it is supposed to be just amazing in every way.

phirl, I keep my most recent journals close at hand too, they have been life/memory savers for me too when I help people here and on the Other Travel board lol

Our parents started us on the travel diaries...I think more to keep us occupied on those long cross country car trips. All these years later I still keep a daily journal when we are traveling. I%26#39;ve updated my style though and now instead of including just the things we did I also include the restaurants anf hotels, as well as what we ate.

I recently found my childhood travel journals and made my mom copies. We were laughing so hard at times we couldn barely read them.

What a great thread phirl!

Tahiti

Tahitigirl, what a sweet gift!

That is hilarious, mistletoe:)

There was a store in CT that I bought a whole bunch of blank journals at for the kids. I am so glad I did that as I had a stash for quite a while.

One thing they did, that I need to try, is to draw pictures. When they were very young (their first trip to Europe they were 4 and 7), their writing was limited, so they did a lot of drawings with very few words. The pictures are great fun to look at, and remind us of things we would have forgotten. Hard to explain, but basically the pictures add a dimension to the written word.

Scarlett--Yes, those long wonderful meals are amazing! So different from here. My mother will be having a big birthday while we are in Paris, and DD will have just turned 16, so we are planning for a very special meal.

I just realized something...in one of our journals, we have a restaurant jotted down near Bayeux that we loved. Of course we could not remember the name, but knew where it was, thanks to the journal and the details, so that is one we are going to try to return to.

';I hate to think how many we would have if we did it buy wine tasting or food tasting ... omigod... ';

No kidding, Scarlett. I couldn%26#39;t justify all those killed trees. :o)

Mtngrl, I remember when I and several other dads used to pile our kids in vans/cars and take 3-4 day road trips to Six Flags Magic Mountain. We required the kids to keep journals, partly because they were missing a couple days of school, but just as much to keep them reasonably manageable on the 15+ drive. Some of them did drawings as well. What fun. But for me, I%26#39;d best stick to photographs. It%26#39;s been a long time since I used to watch John Nagy.