Traveling to new places and enjoying new experiences can be an incredible—and often thrilling—way to discover new perspectives, unlock your creativity, and create lasting memories. And while travel’s transformative power may be fleeting or fade with the onset of the post-vacation blues, keeping a Handcrafted Travel Journal offers the opportunity to fix some of those feelings on the page, giving you a permanent piece of your travels to hold on to.

What Is a Travel Journal?

In their most traditional form, travel journals, or travel diaries, are a space for you to reflect on all the adventures and vacations you take. From the sights you see to the delicious foods you eat, a travel journal is a great place to capture these memories alongside the feelings you had at the time.

Keep in mind, however, that there’s certainly no set formula for creating a Handcrafted Travel Journal: The beauty of keeping one is that it can ultimately be whatever you make of it. Beyond being a diary to add written entries to that summarize an excursion’s events.

Why Use a Handcrafted Travel Journal?

If you think of your vacation as just the one week you are away, you are missing out on a lot of fun. Think of the quote, “happiness is a journey not a destination.”

There are 5 reasons to use a travel journal: planning, anticipation, mindfulness, reflection, and memories.

Enjoy the entire process of travel which means not just being there, but also planning, anticipation, being mindful during the journey, and time to reflect when you return home.

Now, rather than a one-week trip, you get to revel in the plans and anticipation before your trip and the reflection time afterwards - that could be months of enjoyment instead of just one week.

A travel journal is a place to record all of those things.

Let’s go through each of the 5 reasons I mentioned above.

Planning

Handcrafted Travel Journal should not be reserved just for when you are away. Use them to create a travel bucket list or wishlist of places and things you want to see.

Once you’ve chosen a destination, use your travel journal to plan your trip including where you’ll stay, how you’ll get there, the cost of the trip, what you want to see and do, a packing list, and expectations.

Many people look at planning for a trip as a stressful time. Let’s change that! Rather than rushing around at the last minute with a million things to do, use your travel planner to plan and organize your tasks so that it’s a pleasure rather than a burden.

Look at this time as part of the actual trip. The time it takes to think about, plan, make reservations, can be an enjoyable part of the process.

Anticipation

What do you think it will be like there? Do you think the people and culture will be different from where you live? What do you expect to see, eat, do? Record all of these thoughts in your head. It is interesting and fun to look back on these thoughts later and compare it to how things actually are when you are on your trip.

Mindfulness

Take the time to really be in the moment when you are on your trip. Stay off the phone and revel in conversations you are having. Be mindful of the things you see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and do while you are on this trip. Make notes of these things so that you can recount them later.

Write about the food, architecture, people, prices,

Don’t wait until the end of the trip to make notes. It’s a good habit to make notes at the end of the day or several times a day so that you don’t miss a thing.

It’s those little things that are the most exciting moments of a trip.

Reflection

When you get back from your trip, take some time to look over your notes. Revisit your anticipation notes and recap how your trip was different from your expectations and write it down.

Write about what you enjoyed, what you would change, and things you would do again. What were your favorite places? What were things you don’t want to miss next time?

You can write this for yourself or as a travel guide for others.

Memories

Add photos to your travel journal. Hopefully, you’ll take lots of photos on your trip.