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What are your favorite travel journal apps?

In earlier forum threads, travelers have given creative ideas about how to turn a paper journal into a great souvenir as well as a great record by, for example, gluesticking or taping cards, tickets, notices, right into the book as you go along.

Now that many people are carrying smartphones or tablets or even phablets with them on their trips, it seems to me that there are parallel creative opportunities in journal and notetaking applications --

What app do you use for travel journal activity, and what nifty feature or tip should we be employing when using it ourselves?

Posted by
32202 posts

For journalling I just use MS Word (with a Netbook), since the material is only for my use. For Blogging I use TravelPod.

Posted by
10221 posts

For blogging I use the Blogger app. It allows me to add photos that I have put onto my iPad.

Posted by
670 posts

For my last trip, I created a blog using Blogger (free, easy) prior to the trip, and loaded the Blogsy app (I think it cost $4.99) onto my ipad. The great thing about Blogsy is that you can write offline and then post when you have Wi-Fi. So I could use my down time on bus rides, etc. to write my posts. Blogsy makes it super easy to import your photos, as well as photos from the internet (for example, if you go somewhere that doesn't allow indoor photography but you'd like to add a photo of the interior), maps, etc. I posted my blog daily, and was really surprised by how many of my friends and family ended up reading it daily...they said it was really fun to travel vicariously with us. When I got home it was easy to cut and past the blog entries into a paper journal. I will definitely use this method of documenting my travels in the future.

Posted by
3941 posts

I like Travelpod. Like some others, you can use it offline - great for train journeys or nights in hotels with no wifi. I tend to use it to jot down notes about what we did each day (on my iPad mini) then after the trip, I just go on my desktop and do the whole journal thing after getting home at my own pace - with the option to share on Facebook and with contacts thru email.

Another interesting one is NoteLedge - it's more like a traditional journaling app (again, use it on my iPad). I used it to plan out our days before leaving on the trip rather then for daily journaling (I had TravelPod for that). You can draw in it, use your own handwriting as opposed to type (with a stylus of course, unless you are really good at making your handwriting look good on an iPad - I'm not). One thing that was helpful - we had to meet up for a walking tour, and I was able to use the navigator window on it to download a map of the meeting place, then paste it to the page...something that in the past I would have printed out and carried in a notebook with me. I'm sure it can do many other things, I haven't explored it too much. Mind you, I do still carry my 'made by me' daily book where I tuck away hotel reservations and tour printouts and whatnot, and gather up my entry tickets and receipts and things I want to save. But if I saw a neat restaurant (gelato places) or store (one in particular in Rome I wanted to visit) before leaving that I wanted to visit, I made a note of it and where it was located in NoteLedge.

Posted by
2456 posts

Thanks everyone who pointed out TravelPod -- it looks like a candidate for the quick-and-dirty category for trip documentation.

My suspicion is that Evernote (and OneNote) could be the ultimate travel diary/journal platform, if you took the time to get it set up optimally. Tipping my toe in the shallow end of Evernote has me thinking that some people have turned it into a cult,
but it does seem that the organizing features and the available plug-ins could make travel blogging into both art and science.
Imagine if receipts and photos of signage were text-searchable!