Starting a Blog on Adventures in Italy/Portugal

There are a number of free blog services. www.blogspot.com is one. It's pretty self-explanatory. But then you need to help people find you....

do it do it do it!! I love blogging my trips, for me it's mostly for myself and my friends/family. I love going back after i've gotten home and re-reading bits and pieces of it. i use blogspot.com (owned by google)., It's easy and free. Also there's wordpress, tumblr, and countless other services, also free.

The other value of a blog is that you can store links as you find them doing your trip research. Then, when you're on your trip you can retrieve them. I use pages for each of my planned destinations and post hyperlinks as I find interesting websites.

I also used www.blogspot.com Because we stay at B&B's, we were not always able to get on the internet. In these cases, I would at least compose our daily travel in a word document. Then when we did get on the internet, I would copy it over to my blog. Often times we stopped at McD's to get on the internet. Worked for us. Keeping up to date on the blog was time consuming. However, our kids were able to know where we were and it helped me to remember what we did during those five weeks. I added a lot of pics once we came home which required a lot of time to edit. If you want to check it out, here's the website: www.european-trip-2010.blogspot.com Not sure why, but it starts with the last few days. You can view other days by clicking on the left side of the page under "blog archive". Have fun on your very long trip.

I used ontheroad.to and thought it worked well (had an app for my phone to use with wireless). It is free, unless you want to use "premium" features (then there is a charge). Many use blogspot and it also has easy interface. I blogged for the first time on my recent trip to Spain - it was a hassle sometimes to get something together that felt "useful" and wasn't just random. Since I also keep a written journal, I felt a bit stretched doing both, but coming home I am so glad I did it - it was fun to see what I said (and what I had already forgotten). I also felt like people knew what I did so I didn't have as many "debriefing" visits with people (not that I didn't want to talk about the trip again, but sometimes it gets tiring). One thing I will say is to test it before you leave. I had some glitches that I'm glad I worked out at home before hand.

Monique, I definitely agree with the others that it would be great to start a Blog for your trip! It's a fantastic way to share travel experiences with family, friends and colleagues, and certainly an improvement over "bulk" E-mails. I Blogged for the first time on my trip last year, and found that it was very easy (although there were some days that I was so busy touring that I just didn't have time to post a Blog entry). I did exhaustive research on the most popular Blogs in order to find the one that I felt most comfortable with, and finally settled on This One. I've been very pleased with it, and will probably use it to Blog every trip now. Happy travels!

I second travelpod.com. I used them when I went to Costa Rica a few years back. What is nice about travelpod is that everything is all built in for you for traveling already. You can set your itinerary ahead of time so your followers can see not only where you are but where you'll be. You can even update via email by sending a message to a custom email that you set up. It's fairly simple but pretty slick.

Wow thanks everyone! I am so excited about getting this off and running. I am going to check out the various suggestions and see which one works for me. Are blogs public or can you limit the people who are view them?

You can set passwords to restrict access.

Monique, Good luck with your blog and please post a link here when you get it going and have a great trip, Wow 90 days! I tried the travelpod last year but didn't care for it. I recently started my own blog in prep for and to continue during my 3 week trip to Italy. I found blogspot.com really easy and intuitive. Here is link to my Going to Venice Blog: http://going-to-venice.blogspot.com

Monique - This slightly off topic, but 90 days will be a fun adventure. As someone that has done long trips, pm me if you need any advice about how to pace yourself. After a couple months, it is easy to get burned out with traveling. Great idea with the blog too.

I'll be EAGERLY awaiting all info on "Lipgloss in Europe": Where to buy, the Do's and Don't's of when and where to apply lipgloss, candid photos of 'the locals' scowling disapprovingly as you apply lipgloss on 1)the metro 2)the TGV 3)walking down the sidewalk 4)at the lunch table. Hey - You can call your blog "Lipgloss in Europe". ;-) Seriously, this sounds like an adventure! Please let us know the name of your blog so we can follow along... ("Lipgloss in Europe" is available; just sayin'...LOL!)

LOL @ Eileen! - am I earning a reputation on this site or what!?! But it's actually quite a good idea. Keep your eyes and ears open! :-)