You can tell yourself right away that you are going on vacation to take advantage of your time and not to write! I understand you, but what a joy to write when you are happy somewhere on your vacation spot!

It is, in fact, the ideal moment to record your observations, funny scenes, your impressions, in a small notebook, to create, on your return, a travel journal. It can be very simple and very pleasant to achieve… enough to prolong the happy moments of your vacation….

Did you know that there is a Travel Journal Fair? This unmissable event for enthusiasts took place from December 13 to 15, 2019 in Clermont-Ferrand for the last edition.

I had already submitted an article on my blog, 2 years ago, around this theme of the travel diary. I repeat the theme to treat it differently, and because I chose the travel journal as a common thread to celebrate the 2 years of the blog, la Plume de Laurence .

Create a book voyage e

You don’t have to be a great writer or a good designer to create your travel journal. This can be done very simply, depending on your desires.

By traveling, in France or in a foreign country, you change your perspective. You are forced to come to terms with a different way of life, sometimes with an unfamiliar language. The journey reveals you to yourself. You have other benchmarks, different impressions.

This is what is very interesting to record in a travel journal. The journey, for an open and curious mind, remains a discovery. You necessarily bring back sensations, wonders, and surprises, pleasant or not. It is part of the traveler’s kit.

This trip is therefore an opportunity to write down all your emotions, all your feelings, all your impressions, all your discoveries. What I like about traveling or on vacation is writing. I created a writing ritual to keep it a pleasure, an invitation to think about my trip differently.

Here is my ritual: I have a little red notebook to quickly write down what I see or what I hear. How to create a Wikipedia profile it’s handy, it doesn’t take up much space in my bag and I always have something on hand to take notes.

It’s impossible to remember all the details of a scene later. But, while taking notes, it is enough to reread them so that the scene comes back to me in memory. Then, I take two moments during the day to write in detail the discoveries of the morning, then of the rest of the day.

As far as I’m concerned, it allows me to rest and rest, because, during a trip, I walk a lot to visit. When I write, I feel outside of time, of space-time itself.

Indeed, I walk a lot on vacation, because this movement induces a beneficial slowness for all-round observation. It allows me to see people or things while having time to observe them. I always stop when taking notes. It’s a break that prepares for writing for after.

Some tips for creating your travel diary

First of all, follow your desires, rather than remaking a model seen on the Internet. You create a memory on paper or in digital version, as I do and like what I will offer you for free in this article.

Choose a notebook that inspires you, for the paper version. You can then customize it as you wish. But, there are ready-made versions of the travel diary, which you can easily find.

As I already mentioned above, you have to take notes regularly, as soon as you see something that catches your eye, as soon as you see something interesting. No matter which method you choose, you should write every day. You will make the final formatting and choices when you return.

Once at your desk, you will have to select the photos to insert in your travel journal, drawings or illustrations, tickets, maps, etc., in short, everything you want to record in your travel journal.

If you opt for a paper version of the travel journal, test the layout before making it final. Above all, follow the chronological order of your stay, day after day.

It is also important to air your text, to prevent your notebook from being too dense. You can also draw, if you have the artistic flair! This will bring a nice side to your entire creation!
The goal is to make your travel journal anything but monotonous. You are therefore spoiled for choice to treat it as you wish and in your image!

You can then, if you wish, publish it on certain social networks, such as Pinterest or Instagram. Remember that the goal is above all to make you happy and above all, to finish your travel diary!

You can also create your travel diary, scrapbooking style. If you’re really lacking inspiration, check out some websites that will eventually get you started. For example, the “my Atlas” site allows you to create an online travel diary.

This notebook will be original, and the use of the site is simple and practical. The site then gives you the option of printing your travel diary. As the slogan of the site in question says so well, it’s “simple, beautiful and free” (unless you decide to print!).

I will not be able to give you a number of pages to reach for your travel journal. It depends on your envy or your inspiration. As each trip is different, the number of pages will vary.

The Travel Journal Fair in Clermont-Ferrand

It was thanks to a friend of my blog, Catherine that I discovered this salon, which I did not know. As I work, I could not go there. But, Catherine was kind enough to share her impressions with me, which I invite you to read in the following paragraph. This show takes place in mid-November. The 2020 version will run from November 13 to 15.

For 3 days, French and foreign cornetists come to exhibit their travel diaries and meet the public. It ranges from watercolors to comics, from traditional notebooks to digital and sound notebooks. In short, all styles are represented.

Jean-Pierre Ruffin was present for the 2019 version of the show, NE dim Gorse offered a literary café around the “banks of the Bosporus”. Short film sessions around the theme of “travel” were organized. A “travel 2.0” round table was devoted to the development of digital technology and its applications, which has profoundly changed the environment for travelers. Raphael Blanc proposed a conference on “The extraordinary voyages of Ella Mallart”, on which I will propose an article to you in this anniversary month of the blog.

The show program was very dense and varied. The 2020 version of the show also promises a diverse program: notebook exhibitions, literary meetings with Wikipedia page creation service, debates-meetings, film screenings, workshops led by notebooks, sound sessions, live sketches, a program youth, a traveler’s corner to share tips between travelers, a book and shop area. Something to satisfy everyone!

Catherine’s visit to the Salon du Carnet de Voyage

Here is the text that Catherine kindly wrote for me, following her visit to the Carnet de Voyage fair in Clermont-Ferrand in November 2019. I thank her very much for this generous text, and especially for having written it on purpose for this blog.

“Here we are, the three friends, for Clermont-Ferrand, for the twentieth Rendezvous du Carnet de Voyage, for a period of three days.

Our motivation: the desire to tell about our small and big trips, to remember the emotions, the colors, the places, the impressions, all in situ. But none of us knew where, or even dared to start…
What a great immersion in the world of travel! So many adventures shared during this show! So many beautiful people I met!

Tiny, small, medium, large, book or accordion travel diaries, purchased or homemade. I was really drawn to the homemade ones.

This man, who has crossed Uzbekistan, makes his own notebooks, with sheets of Chanson paper folded in half, inserted by five into each other and summarily tied, the time to invest them fully. He thus fills out several booklets during his journey, then gathers them together in a single book that he has a local craftsman bound for good, with a goatskin that he will have chosen on the spot. This artist paints, and also writes a lot in his notebooks, more than all the others, but in addition, he makes people write in them he meets. I found this approach very touching.

This other cornetist is a painter of the Navy that is to say that she joined the group of forty artists who have the privilege of having access to all the boats of the National Navy, for an unforgettable crossing. Thus, she received a rank and a uniform, and can leave on an aircraft carrier, or in a submarine (116h in the submarine), with her paradoxical seasickness which she loses when she is in the sea. Ocean depths. She painted throughout the trip and exhibited on board before disembarking.

They are more than a hundred cornetists to share their passion and to answer the questions of the curious. The schoolchildren go on a hunt for drawings, collecting all those made for them by the complacent artists. Some of them host a “live sketch” so that we can see them in action live on the big screen.

I liked listening to this craftsman, manufacturer, in his dining room, albums of sketches or drawings, of which he skillfully explains the different stitches for binding, whose names also encourage travel: Belgian, Swiss, French, Japanese, Coptic… This passion is beautiful to listen to and to watch.

A pretty and young carpenter has invented a completely and easily removable wall frame, to stage her travel diary and change pages every day, just by enclosing it in its glazed box and surrounded by smooth wood or with the bark still apparent: she found it a pity that the finished notebooks were sleeping on a shelf and decided to bring the notebook to life in the daily life of the house. What a great story!

Travel diaries are full of black and white or watercolor drawings. To each his own style and expression. Some are without texts, others have short annotations, others long stories, but all invite to travel: travel in the material (the touch of the paper is important in the notebook), travel in a universe particular to each one, travels in the countries visited, travel in the emotions through the colors and the words used…

College students have traveled and produced travel diaries: it touched me a lot, in this life where writing takes up less space than before among adolescents. Their notebooks are also incredibly rich. Some make you think: I have in memory a particularly moving notebook on migrants, where the words reached my sensitivity.

And then there were the workshops with cornetists. I made two that finally made me want to dare, without complex, because I just want to. The first speaker made us work on the “skyline”, a real technical discovery to capture the essential. The second made us uninhibited with regard to drawing, by leading us to draw quickly, with different gestural techniques, with a pen, which prohibits the eraser and forces us to accept all our features, clumsy or not. These two workshops were intense in content, but also in terms of my personal journey towards the travel diary.

And then, during a break in the library corner of the living room, I sat down and began to munch, with great pleasure, the people around me. I even discovered that a woman was drawing me … sketching out the others!
Another woman came to sit next to me. I struck up a conversation with her and found out that we were from the same department. I also learned that she was leading a group of urban sketchers from Berry, with the aim of going to draw together the villages of Berry, once a month, and I saw there a great opportunity to force myself to draw. In situ, the only way to progress, for a humble Berry travel diary.

Coming to this show was incredibly culturally rich, with travel films to watch and shows. We saw two shows: the first where a cornetist sketched live on the songs of his 2 acolytes, also travelers, the second where the comic book was put at the service of the protection of the elephants of Laos, because the cornetists followed a caravan. Of six pachyderms responsible for sensitizing the populations, on a journey of five hundred kilometers, on foot of men and elephant legs.

In short, lots of emotions, great encounters during this show which suggests that we come back for a future edition. We leave rich in a thousand ideas and desires for creations… and / or trips to be narrated pictorially or scripturally, but in any case, on the spot. The important thing is what you feel and what you want to remember. No matter the level or the quality of the drawing or the text: the notebook is above all intimate and personal, but only asks to be shared, to then travel in the minds of others. I see it as an opportunity to combine two of my interests: painting and writing. I do not know if I will succeed, but the path seems to me attractive and enriching. ”

My travel diary on Portugal

With my partner, I left, in July 2019, in the two main cities of Portugal, namely: Porto and Lisbon. It is a country that I wanted to discover for a long time.

Through almost 170 pages, and lots of personal photos, I bring you into the world of my Portuguese holidays. Of course, for the purposes of the blog, I made this version of the travel diary as an eBook, to make it available to you for free on the blog. All you have to do is go to the “my free guides” section and download it as you wish.
I took incredible pleasure in taking notes every day, observing more than usual and trying to insert some anecdotes seen or lived. I also made the effort to reproduce my impressions. It seems to me a little more personal than the first travel diary that I offered to you on the Basque Country. At first, it’s not always easy to know how to do it. I try at least, and above all, I persist…

As a conclusion

This article is very different from the one I wrote 2 years ago on the blog. Writing a travel diary allowed me to express myself in my own way, to develop my creativity in terms of writing, while keeping the memory of this trip very present.

During a trip, I cannot be satisfied simply to take selfies, or to take thousands of photos which will then remain in my computer, certainly without collecting dust, but remaining in a computer oblivion.

Creating a travel diary, whatever its shape and style, allows memories to be immortalized. At a time when mass tourism has developed, this gives more color to the stay, and makes it more authentic and more personal!
Your notebook will then become an inspiring treasure dear to your eyes, which you will always enjoy looking at and sharing with others!