Travel Advice - Take travel notes

One of the great joys that can result from taking travel notes is reading them in the years following the trip and rediscovering the wonderful places that you have visited and the camaraderie that you experienced while doing so.

Keeping a travel journal often exposes the emotions that are touched by travel and vacationing, making the experience even sweeter. The act of writing a journal helps crystallize the best of the day’s events and helps you understand the kinds of activities that you really enjoy. Examine the topics focused on in your notes and try to plan the next day's travel to include similar activities. Your travel notes will help focus on the “wheat” rather than the “chaff” of travel.

It is a fact of vacationing that a few days after you have left a region you will not remember the names and details of places that you visited. As we have little need to immediately remember or use these travel details, we do not store them for reuse. However, if you include them in your travel notes, you will be able to retrieve this information in an instant, anytime in the future.

Detailed travel notes will help you with several tasks on your return. First, use your travel notes to help identify the locations and details of your photographs. Next, reference your notes when you want t recommend places to others who are interested in taking a trip to the same area. Finally, good notes will make it a lot easier to book a particularly attractive hotel or bed and breakfast four or five years from now when your memory of those names has dimmed.

Taking your own notes is the best way to remember the personal side of travel. Be sure to include the towns and stops on your itinerary. Record the names of lodgings where you stayed and the names of restaurants where you had great meals. Include stories about people you met, your first impressions when you saw something that you had heard about all your life, or, simply, those things that surprised or amused you when you saw them.

Anecdotes are the heart of travel; they are the curiosities that keep us turning the corner in search of new travel experiences. Many travelers regard “memories” as at the core of travel. Possessing a written record of your travel makes it possible to relive the experience whenever you want.

Yes, it can be a pain to find some time each day to write the material but you can easily find the time if you try. Riding in the car, sitting at lunch, taking a break in the afternoon, there is always time, if you set keeping travel notes as a goal. To be certain, writing travel notes is hard work that pays dividends in future years.

To answer the question of whether you should take notes using the time honored tradition of writing them in a journal or using a personal digital assistant, see our article  Books or electronic notes?

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