15 Easy Travel Journal Ideas to Make Your Trip Diary Look Amazing
With the new trend of bullet journaling, creating a trip diary on vacation is becoming a popular activity. They make great memory books from the trip and also help you remember and appreciate each new adventure. But what should you put in your journal? Here are 15 easy travel journal ideas that will help you create an amazing souvenir from the trip.
- Snap Instant Photos
- Map Your Journey
- Add Ticket Stubs
- Get Creative with Watercolor
- Accent with Washi Tape
- Keep a Food Log
- Fun with Hand Lettering
- Show Me the Money
- Mail a Postcard
- Hotel Notepad Notes
- Organize by Chronological and Thematic
- Smell the Flowers
- Time for Reflection
- Just the Facts
- Memorable Quotes
This post has been written in partnership with Best Buy and Canon. All thoughts and opinions are mine.
Snap Instant Photos
One of the best and easiest ideas to add color and dimension to your travel diary is with photos. Traveling with an instant photo camera works perfectly for snapping photos on your trip and quickly adding them on the fly.
I recently got the Canon IVY CLIQ camera and love how I can snap a photo and it prints directly from the camera – no ink or separate printer needed! The photos are printed with a heat process so you also don’t need to worry about waiting for ink to dry. And, the special Zink photo paper has a peel-and-stick backing so you can place it directly in your journal.
Pick up your own Canon IVY CLIQ at Best Buy.
Map Your Journey
You can buy a map of your destination or use a printed Google Map to mark spots you visited, or track your road trip journey. If you’re making a creative travel journal you might try drawing a map of your country with colorful pens and pencils.
Hand Lettering Travel Journal Ideas
Often when you think of journaling you imagine a big page of writing. However, having some fun with hand lettering and dressing up your simple text can make your journal look more exciting. You can watch some YouTube videos or check Pinterest for tutorials on brush lettering, or you can just add some color and lines or dots to your normal text.
Add Ticket Stubs
Here’s a super easy thing to add to your journal, ticket stubs. Whether it’s for a fun train ride, great museum you visited, or even your luggage baggage claim ticket, add it to your journal for a fun memory.
Get Creative with Watercolor
If you’re creative and have some art ability, consider adding watercolor sketches to your travel journal. My friend Keryn has a great post about creating a watercolor journal. All it takes is bringing along a watercolor palette or you could even try watercolor pencils.
Accent with Washi Tape
Washi tape is one of the most fun and inexpensive travel journal ideas. You can add some along the border of your page or use some as a headline box and write on top of the tape. Washi tape is also great for taping your ticket stubs and other collectibles to your journal pages.
Keep a Food Log
Here’s a fun idea for what to write in your journal – make a food log! This could be a simple chart of the name of the restaurant and what you ordered, or you could make it a featured section and list all your memories about the restaurant and what you ate. Food is one of the best things about traveling to new places!
Show Me the Money
If you’re traveling internationally add some of the local currency to your travel journal. You might glue on a cool looking coin, or add a bill or two to a page. You can also add the conversion math, a fun memory to compare if you plan a return trip or just want to reminisce. You could also keep track of your vacation cost as part of this section.
Mail a Postcard
This is a fun activity we’ve done with our girls on our vacations. You can buy a postcard and add it by itself to your travel journal, however, it’s more exciting to mail it home to yourself. Get a local stamp and mail off your postcard to home, save a page in your journal, and add it once you return home.
Hotel Notepad Notes & Keys
If you’re staying in fun and unique places, you’ll want to make sure you don’t forget where you stayed. Save a room key card to add to your journal. Or make some notes about what you loved about your hotel on the branded hotel notepad, then add that notepad page to your journal.
Organize by Chronological and Thematic
It seems obvious to create your journal entries in chronological order, however, consider possibly organizing your entries based on a theme. Perhaps you love architecture and want to create a section for entries just based on the amazing design and buildings you discovered. Or perhaps you love color and want to add notes and photos of all the colors you find during your trip.
Of course, the standard chronologically ordered diary also allows you to create a fabulous memory book.
Smell the Flowers
Adding pressed flowers or leaves to your travel journal can add some great dimension and scent to your book. Perhaps there’s a popular tree or plant that is native to your destination. Or perhaps you just fell in love with the way a certain flower smelled. Please just be mindful that you’re not taking or harming the ecosystem by taking a piece of nature for your journal.
Time for Reflection
This is one of the travel journal ideas that could be the most impactful or important for memory keeping. Be sure you take time to reflect on your travel experiences and make notes about what you felt or the impact a certain experience made on you. Travel should be inspiring and even transformational, take time to be mindful about your emotions and reactions.
Just the Facts
Travel also gives us the opportunity to learn! Whenever I travel somewhere new I feel like I’m always learning interesting travel facts and trivia about a destination or about the world. Your travel journal is the perfect place to keep track of all that trivia and it’ll help you recall the facts later on, too!
Memorable Quotes
To wrap up my travel journal ideas list I’m recommending you try to listen more to others. Perhaps you’ll take a walking tour or have a chat with a local chef. Try to be mindful of anything they say that captures the spirit of your destination and make note of that quote in your travel journal. Quotes can be great ways to remember the people you met on your journey.
Using these creative travel journal ideas will help you fill-up the pages in your travel journals giving you long-lasting memories of your adventures. If you’re looking for help planning your trip, check out my travel planning workbook, Wanderlist. And if you want a large memento to track all your trips, check out this fun photo travel map idea!
