A big part of traveling, for anyone, are the memories, experiences, and unforgettable moments you have while traveling. So it’s important to ensure you hold onto those memories for as long as possible. Traveling is something you can’t always put a price tag on; you’ll learn so much about not only the world or other cultures, but about yourself, and that is invaluable.
What I am getting at is, upon returning from your epic adventure through the jungles of Thailand or your road trip to the west coast, how will you hold onto those memories the longest? How will you immortalize the experiences, place, and people you met? Well, I have a few fun ideas that you might want to try!
1) Ticket-Stub Collage
When we traveled across Europe last fall, Mike and I made sure to keep all of our ticket stubs, whether it be the ticket to go up the Eiffel Tower or the bus ticket I took to get to Monaco, or even the receipt from the pizzeria in Naples where pizza was actually invented. We each brought a plastic bag and slipped all tickets, passes, receipts, and other souvenirs into it while we traveled and by the time we got home, we had a bountiful amount of little souvenirs that instantly brought back memories of most all of the experiences we had.
We immortalized these experiences by creating a collage of all the tickets and passes we brought home. I, personally, went out to a school supplies store and purchases a fair-sized foam board and some good glue. I took it home and began to place the souvenirs onto the board, ensuring the different colours and styles of the tickets and receipts were varied and dispersed in order to allow the viewer to want to see the entire board. Once I was content with a layout, I began to glue everything onto the board. It looks absolutely awesome, and I framed it with a really nice dark wood frame and plan to hang it in my room above my desk so that I can reminisce whenever I like. It was a lot of fun to make, and a great way to share all your experiences with others in a simple, creative way!
2) Photo Slideshow
As you probably know, I love photography, so I ended up taking almost 2000 pictures during our European adventure. Mind you, some of the pictures were blurry or crooked, while others sported someone walking into the frame at the wrong time. Nonetheless, after getting rid of all the undesirable photos, I still had nearly 1500 that I was content with. Now I don’t know about you, but my friends and family would never be able to sit through me explaining 1500 photos to them. Hell, I don’t think I could even talk for that long myself! In a case like this, sometimes the phrase “quality over quantity” truly applies. So, I decided to make a slideshow, and limit it to 10 minutes in length. That meant narrowing down the pictures to a quarter of the amount I originally had. Don’t get me wrong, it was tough to decide what ones to keep and ones to not display, but after finally creating the simple slideshow of only the best photos from the trip, the ones that truly captured our trip best, I was quite happy with it.
Make a slideshow for your pictures, and limit it to a reasonable length. You don’t need anything fancy, just a simple, fun way that people can watch and learn a bit about your experience without them having to bring a sleeping bag over to your house when you invite them to see all your pictures. Set it to an appropriate song, and use Facebook, YouTube, or any other social media tool to share it with your friends, and you’re all set. I made one for the trip, so if you’re interested, check it out here.
3) Blog It!
Yep. You might’ve guessed it considering the amount of fun I had keeping this blog for not only my trip to Europe but my road trip across Canada. Blogging is a fun way to not only keep your friends and family informed of your whereabouts but a great way for you to record events and experiences as they happen. Instead of getting back home and trying to remember what you did in Florence on the second day, or what restaurant you ate in Paris that you really enjoyed, just find a half hour here and there during the course of your trip and blog about it. Whether you treat it like a personal journal or diary, or something more formal, it is an excellent way to immortalize those memories as they happen and ensures you don’t forget anything. I’ve had so much fun looking back on some of my posts and remembering certain restaurants, people, events, and experiences that I might have either not remembered entirely or even forgotten completely. When you take a trip like ours, where you see so much and do so much, it’s almost inevitable that you will forget parts of it. So a blog helps you keep all those experiences with you wherever you go and, at the same time, lets your family and friends know what you’re up to while you’re traveling so you don’t have to start from scratch when you begin to tell them about your trip back home.
Hopefully that sparked a couple ideas for your next trip. Even something as simple as using your pictures as a screensaver on your computer is a great idea. I have all my pictures and Carson’s pictures combined into one folder and showcased whenever my screensaver comes on. Things like that will help you never forget a trip of a lifetime!
Happy traveling!
Dan..
Good advice on remembering your trip, Dan. I spent 5 weeks on a road trip from Los Angeles to El Salvador in Central America in 1968 and I didn’t even record any of it even on FILM and I regret it. It was a VERY eventful trip! Cheers!
Don