Keeping Travel Memories

Fortunately OR unfortunately, with the exception of culling duplicate photos on my return, I don't do any of that.

Maybe with the new Freeform App on iOS 16 I might start making a few notations here and there.

When we visit a place, we try to take a photo of the sign so that we can keep the places straight. That is especially true for waterfalls in Iceland, where there are thousands.

As for keeping travel memories, I just found out about Mixbook from another travel forum. It is an app to make photo albums you can order. You can add text too, which I did so that I could label where places were. I had a coupon for 50% off my first order, so made a book from one of our big trips and ordered 3 copies of it, to give to the kids who came along. I am not good with technology, but even I figured this one out pretty easily! I never had to ask my husband for help, lol. Anyway, I was so impressed with the ease of it that I made albums for 3 more trips, again, finding a discount code. If you are on their home page, look at the top under "deals" and they will have the current coupons listed there.

I have begun using the Polarsteps App and I love it. I post photos and brief commentary daily. This can be viewed only by people I have invited to “follow” the trip, so think friends and family. This helps them know what I am doing and that I am ok, as well as builds a record of the trip. When I return they provide an option to publish my trip as a book (this is the part that would cost money). I choose it, and about two weeks later a lovely book about my trip arrives with all my pictures and comments.

I use the TripIt App for my itinerary and I can always look back for details about hotels,etc.

It is fun on a long winter day to sit down and look through my very own coffee table books and remember trips. It is also an easy format to share a trip with a visitor.

• I put pictures more-or-less by location in folders on my PC (example: 2022/Switzerland/Lauterbrunnen).
• I make extemporaneous notes on my trip spreadsheet as sort of a journal. Rather like your #2. I can refer to the notes and my pictures folder to find what I might need to refresh my memory on.
• I blog, which has become a an 11 year memory book for us. The blog is my “trip report.” Hubby makes notes on his calendar and he can usually fill in a location or detail I missed (i.e., where did we eat the last night of the trip?).

We often reflect on a prior trip when a Facebook memory pops up (I post my blog there as well as brief on-the-go moments) and I upload my photos to Amazon which does an “on this day” memory pop up. It’s fun to see a date we often travel pop up with several years of memories. For example, we are always in Europe in September so perhaps Sept 4 pops up with photos from 2012, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021, and so on. Amazon has a pretty amazing search feature too, so I can locate photos there by date, place, etc.

@Laurel Yes! I forgot about "On This Day," which OneDrive does as well. It is a great memory jogger.

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far. I'm getting lots of great ideas. Keep 'em coming!

History Traveler, posting trip reports is a great way to save memories! I'm always amazed when I go back to read a trip report I've posted here, at how much I've forgotten, or even remembered incorrectly.

I usually post reports within a week or so of returning home, while my memories are still fresh. I also make notes while traveling, not organized or insightful enough to be called a "journal," (although I do sometimes call it that,) but notes on where we went, where we stayed, what we saw. I've paid more attention the last 5 years or so to details about hotels, guided tours, and meals, since those things are of greatest interest to our fellow Forum members. (Well, and packing, of course.)

My notes have gotten much more specific and much longer over the years. When I look back at trip notes from our days camping as students, many days will be covered in a line or two. Gradually I started entering more and more observations, and I'm so glad I did!

It occurs to me, just now, that I might go back through my posting history and copy all of my trip reports to a folder here at home. Hmmm, not a bad idea. But it'll wait; we have another trip coming up in a couple of weeks!

I have to add a funny story about taking notes while traveling. About 10 years ago, my neighbor, who was writing a book on Oklahoma history, asked me to join her on a 4 or 5 day trip through the western part of the state. We visited historical sites, old graveyards, and natural wonders.

On about the third night, as she watched me yet again writing up my notes on the day, she suddenly sat up in bed and said, "OK, That's it. I'm breaking a promise." "What???" She continued: "I've always said I'd never ask anyone to leave me anything, but if you die before I do, will you leave me your travel journals?"

I still laugh every time I think about that, and yes, we're still friends.

How Is Freeform different from Notes? Thanks

I take typically 100 - 200 photos in a day on my phone during a trip. At the end of the day, I download them on an old netbook and rename them for organization and description.

If I forgot what is the subject matter of my photo (easy to do when I take so many photos), I can select the photo while it is in my phone and push "search" and google will compare it to similar photos and give me a detailed description. I sometimes do this on the go when I come across some un-marked attraction or monument which is unknown to me. I take the photo and search for description and history.

History Taveler, you could try using google search on an old photo to see if google can find answer for you.

I make a photo book of each trip; I just go with pictures. Sometimes I write a trip report. I should probably do this more consistently, but it takes a long time, and sometimes I don’t get around to it. I also have a Word doc with a list of all the places I have stayed on my trips. It’s useful if we decide to return to a place or if someone else is looking for a place to stay.

When planning my trip, I keep all the information I need in a Word doc, which I save in the cloud. I also have all the emails relating to my trip saved in a folder. This enables me to look up specific details, though I rarely do once my photo book is done.

My husband and I do an absurd amount of pre-trip planning and various parts of it are stored in various places: Word documents, Google Docs, Google Sheets, photos of guidebook pages, bookmarked websites, bookmarked posts on these forums, Google Maps little green flags, paper maps, marked-up copies of paper maps, and pages of guidebooks.

Then, on and after our trips we fail miserably to make any notes or updates or to label most of our 1,000+ photos. We do make a short slideshow for our family and a couple of friends.

Then we start planning the next trip.

We do talk about our trips a lot and look at our photos and say that we should be more organized. Anyway, it's the pre-trip stuff I paw through when trying to answer someone's question here.

Our picture taking serves a few purposes, to preserve memories, to make a photo book, to add to a video which my husband will edit and distribute to family members so they can see what we got up to and for our elderly relatives who will never go to Europe. So the sorting and storage needs to facilitate all these different objectives. To keep them sorted I use my excel spreadsheet to keep track of what we did on which day, then make folders on my computer (it's how my husband can add to his editing software) for each day and just drop the pictures in there. I may also make a small reel to post to social media while we are traveling.

My family says I have a memory like an elephant, so I guess that helps - LOL!

For several trips, I brought a small journal notebook to write about the trip. But, that ended up with one day of good notes and then just the restaurant names or entrees that we ate and a journal of what we spent on activities (I like to keep a spreadsheet, afterwards.)

Several years ago, I started writing up a trip report when we returned home to be helpful to forum readers. I printed a copy of it and added it to my physical folder of paper tickets, etc. from the trip. As the years progressed those trip reports became more detailed.

Then in 2018, I started taking some solo trips. I posted a few photos on Facebook with a short summary for the first two locations. I didn’t intend on continuing it during the trip, but my husband said several friends were talking about it and requesting that I not stop. So, it became a way to “bring along some friends”. Keeping it succinct and the quantity of photos small helped me to keep it interesting and also share personal thoughts of special people I encountered each day. Now when I return home, it’s very easy to copy/paste those into a Word doc, add a few details, such as hotel names that forum readers want to know, and it’s posted right away. Those trip reports have been so nice to reread, especially during the Covid non-travel time.

I’ve made a printed photobook from Costco’s on-line shop for each trip. Those are treasured books! I have them in our living room bookcase and change out which one is standing to see the front cover photo. Now that Costco just stopped offering that on-line shop, I will be checking out other options to make the same type of books. I don’t label my photos - just the name of each city and a front page that gives a short summary.

The entire set of photos are stored on iCloud for the last four years. Otherwise, browsing through my photobooks is plenty. Oh, I have some favorite photos made into canvas enlarged prints hanging as a large grouping on one wall of my home office. If someone wants to see photos of my trips, I show them that wall. Typically, that’s enough for their interest.

As a retired engineer, I also have detailed spreadsheets - not to restrict spending but to know how we/I spent it on vacation. Even in the planning phase, I make a piechart, and if the “activities” wedge is too small of a percentage, I will look for additional fun ways to make the trip memorable. That’s led to favorite cooking classes, music concerts, etc.

Thanks for posting this! I’m looking for new possibilities!

My wife takes many photos. Once back in the hotel or apartment I write a synopsis on my phone of our day highlighting what impressed us. She sends me photos on What's App which automatically download to my phone once I open them. Sometimes the photos remind me of something and sometimes my blurb reminds her of photos she has taken. After this bit of collaboration, I send out the story of our day long with a curation of the pictures that relate to the blurb to a growing list of friends and family.

Initially we did this periodically. Now we do it every day. I title the email with the date and the location which allows us to later have a log of our trip. It sounds like a lot but we have found it really rewarding to real time share and later have the complete log. We do not attempt to include everything we did but the stand outs and what moves us. My wife often has a keen eye for the quirky cut, or unusual so the photos go beyond just recording sites. In addition, I take notes on my overall trip spreadsheet about our hotels, meals etc .

I have a few ways to keep my memories alive and current. I keep a journal of everyday, nothing too involved if I don’t have the time or am tired. It might just be bullet points. I keep brochures from each stop and either cards or pictures of restaurants. When I get home I make a scrapbook on Snapfish. All my books are on my coffee table for us to peruse whenever.

When making my books I can cross reference the pictures with the day and brochures. The first page is always the itinerary with dates and the names of the travelers. Even if it’s just my husband and I. The last page is usually a summary and our thoughts about the trip.

It is interesting how many of us still produce physical objects in such a digital age. One tradition in our household is to create a calendar featuring the 12 best photos from the year's travels. We started using Snapfish a few years ago, and they do a great job. It is always a fun "memory moment" when we turn the page onto a new month and another great picture.

I started to keep a journal for the first time last year, but quickly discovered that handwriting wasn't going to work as I can't read my own writing. I've taken to using the Samsung Notes app on my phone and from there I will do a Trip Report for this forum when I get home. I started writing Trip Reports of past trips out of boredom during the pandemic and enjoyed it, and now I've bookmarked my own reports so I can look back.

I like the Notes app, because I can fill it out immediately at a site if a thought comes to me that's important or amusing to me. Sometimes it's one quick sentence at a time of some fun fact. Looking back at my day in Lewes, England in September, I wrote of the Lewes Priory, "ruins of the former toilet area, had 59 cubicles so Monks wouldn't have to line up and wait between prayers." For me, these little facts bring more life to a journal than if I had just written that "I walked through the priory today."

Interesting question.

Sorry Rick, but we don't use any sort of travel agency any more.
Don't buy traveler's checks, and don't use second party airfare brokers like Expededia. We book with the airlines directly.
We've also learned to dismiss, very cheap airfares, if there are extraordinary long over stays, and many connections. This use to be fun, but we are getting too old to sleep in an airport
We use paper maps.

We have stepped down the clothing we bring, to be presentable, but not high formal. We are not foodies that need to dress up for a restaurant evening's night out. And, really have never had the inclination anymore to find that perfect expensive regional food, from a highly rated, snooty restaurant. Three blocks back, off the main tourist corridor is the same, less expensive and better regional fare.
These are a bit tricky, because there is a local group of regulars, and they have absolute authority, to move you, if you have set up at the wrong table at the wrong time. You graciously apologize, and quickly move to the lesser tables. And then, for some reason, all the wine is covered by the house. :)
We are very bad at technology and using smart phones. So paper tickets are something we have never given up. And the same can be said for cash. We don't use Paypal for small vendors, cash always works, for large and small payments. And large payments in cash, hotel rooms, etc, almost always has a discount of some sort. We take as many credit and debit cards as we can. But only try to use the one debit card set up for travel, which is tried to our travel savings account. One place makes it easier to figure out if something went wrong.

Not knowing how to use smart phones, we bring a cheap laptop, which we have done since 2004, and it works out using a laptop, cause the hotel always had a printer.

We don't take our good cameras. Most sites don't let you set up anyway for long exposure. And digital cameras made such huge jumps in what they can do from 2004 to today, that any old, $20 dollar used camera works for us. 4 GB SD cards are near free. So we take lots of those, and way too many pictures. I've learned that it makes no sense to turn a digital camera sideways if you enough of the view. There is no good way to take a picture behind a glass case in low light.

Leaned that all the burned DVDs of our vacations, sent out to all our friends, with comment, isn't all that interesting to them. The web has far better people doing this anyway.

My wife has had to go through three sets of luggage, because they were not made well, and the wheels ran out. I have a set, I have been using since 2004, because they have been modified to use hardware store caster wheels. I'm not giving up those even if there is some duct tape involved. Its very important to make your luggage identifiable. We tie very colorful, short ribbons to the handles.

If lost, don't go to the local TI. Go directly to the train station. :)

I’m glad you asked this question as it’s a bit of a passion/obsession with me. I make photobooks using a software program called My Memories. It’s easy to use and I think does a terrific job.
Here is an example;
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZbqEi9TkLDCq9EYU6
All my other photobooks of my trips are under my profile. They are my memory keepers and I print all of them using Shutterfly.

This will seem a dampener but I wanted to share my experience over the past couplea days. As the remaining relative for my aunt, I have been charged with taking care of and getting rid of all her personal possessions, and she was a hoarder. And she had travel memories, carefully arranged in the old style coil-bound albums ie. stuck to pages with a plastic overlay. These of course are her memories, not my memories, so those carefully assembled albums will make their way to the condo dumpster in the ensuing days - there are no other choices.

I have gone the easier route with my travel pictures and, thanks to digital photography, they only require a delete key to get rid of them.

periscope--I can definitely understand that, and it isn't a downer, IMO. I am nearing that situation with my mom. We will be bringing all of her important possessions to our house in a few weeks. May brother gets all the files, and I get all the trip pictures, lol. Anyway, her photos are in boxes so I first need to get them on my laptop and then I will do one or two small albums with just a couple pics from each her trips. I will make two albums, one for her for now, but another for when she is gone. That way my brother and I will each have a small album of her on the trips that made her so happy. It is a struggle to figure out what to do with so much of this. It will be very hard to throw away so much.

I do a bunch of different things to keep my travel memories, and so that I can also help other travelers with advice. I bring a small journal with me on our trips, and I record very briefly what we did each day, where we ate, and what we ate. This is a brief outline. I bring home brochures, ticket stubs, etc. but I eventually throw those away. I use all of this information to write a trip report (with photos) that I post on another travel forum because they have a mechanism to upload photos, and I like their format better. I type my trip reports in Word, so I then print them out and file them in a 3-ring binder, in addition to having them on my computer. It's probably overkill but sometimes it's easier to access the paper copy.

We create files on our computer for our photos, much like someone else here mentioned: for example: 2022/Greece

I have also created a few photobooks using Shutterfly for a couple trips, using the best photos. I am behind on this. At first I did one book for each trip. But that could end up being a lot of books. So in the future I might consolidate, be more selective, and create one book for several trips.

We still have tons of old-fashioned photo albums filled with travel photos, family photos, etc. You know the type: the 3-ring binders with vinyl sleeves, or the magnetic pages. Don't know what will happen to those some day. They take up a lot more room than the Shutterfly albums. And some of the pages are coming apart.

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with technology, and am not the kind of person who automatically says "newer is better." Having said that, I think the leap to digital cameras and digital pictures was a godsend. Specifically for this topic, I just don't know how often I'd engage with photos tucked away three-ring photo albums (or worse, boxes of slides!) Digital picture-taking allows so many ways to interact with the photos later, many mentioned here: photo books, calendars, screen-savers, websites and blogs shared with friends and family. Each touchpoint reignites memories. I too have had to tackle relatives' old photo albums and boxes of slides and make tough decisions. We personally made the switch to digital in 2004 and never looked back!

I have a couple things I would like to say. As someone who is interested in genealogy and married to an amateur genealogist I wish I had some of my grandparents photos or great-grandparents! I went back and scanned/digitized all my photos from the age of film. I turned them into albums. Those magnetic albums destroy your photos over time. While I realize that my kids/descendants may not keep all these, they may keep one or two. No matter, I enjoy making them and reliving my trips looking at them.

Tammy--That is exactly what I am working on now too! My dad was really into genealogy before dementia set in and he has notebooks, all very organized, of it. I just need to get that along with all the old photos into my computer and into a book. When dementia started, I took all the photos and sat down with him and had him tell me exactly who everyone was. I am so glad I did that at the time when he still had tat information. He has it all the way back to the mid 1600's, so it will be a big job, but something I really want to get done. Thanks for the reminder as it has been set aside the last few months.

History Traveler, I, too, have a love/hate relationship with technology and I don't always believe that newer is better. However, digital photos are definitely a godsend. In addition to my photobooks, I also make calendars on Shutterfly, using photos from our travels and photos of our children and grandchildren.

Thank you everyone for some of these great ideas. I’m so far behind on getting albums done. I do what so many of you do and create a digital photo album on my IPad once I get home. The trouble is, I start planning my next trip and sometimes put the digital album on the wayside. Distractions!!!

This past May, while on the Best of Poland tour, I stared a photo book on Snapfish. I used my iPad to sort the pictures and created the book during my trip. At the end of each day, while the memories were still fresh, I uploaded the desired pictures to the app and made my captions as I went along. When I returned home I edited the final version and then ordered it. It turned out great.

Vanessa--That is a great idea! We will be doing another big trip to Iceland this summer. Seventeen days, so I will try to work on an album as we go since I may forget things by the end of that. Thanks for the idea!

Update--My first album from Mixbook arrived yesterday and I am very impressed with the quality! It just looks so nice, the paper, the feel, everything.