Travel Books

I love visiting my local book store, grabbing a coffee and browsing the travel book shelves. I can't get enough of the guide books and love letting my imagination run wild with the places I could visit and the things I could do. 

There are some creative guide books out there. I secretly wish I one day am an author of one of these kinds of books. Recently I've been exploring the more niche travel books and have enjoyed the London centred displays for the Olympics.

I may have to purchase the "Tea and Cake" book (foreground, centre), because clearly I need to  travel England discovering the best tea and cake places.

Fun travels!

Personal Journal: Weekend in Ottawa

After graduation its inevitable that everyone goes their separate ways, returning home, moving abroad, moving to different parts of Canada looking for work. If you are lucky, you stay in touch with the best people you met and visit them occasionally. That's exactly what I did this past weekend. In my first year of uni I met a girl who lived in the room next to me. We were in different programs but shared a love of romantic comedies and dancing. Now she's married and expecting a baby boy. I took the train up to Ottawa to visit and attend the baby shower. It was a great weekend.

(The leather bag I used for this weekend is fantastic. I'm already planning on how I can bring it to England. Carry-on perhaps? Gotta love great thrift store finds.)

Weekend in Ottawa seen through instagram. (backwards)

1. home again

2. star stamp

3. getting it done (work that is)

4. train delay

5.baby shower 

6. diaper cake

7. getting ready

8. tasty muffin

9. comfy bed and Bay blanket

10. purple lips

11. bags

12 union station

Fun travels!

Write About It

I like travel. I like journal books. Therefore, to the best deductive reasoning, I love travel journals!

When I did a semester abroad to London in my undergrad (when the romance began), part of our semester project was to create a scrapbook for each course. I thoroughly enjoyed creating them. One for Art History, one for Drama, and one for Urban Geography.

 I really liked the end result of the Urban Geography scrapbook, but it was very neat and clean. The Art History scrapbook on the other hand was chaotic, over-stuffed and wonderful. Think of Wreck this Journal meets school project.  These scrapbooks taught me to collect all random ephemera of the places we went and things we did in London. (it also helped decorate my boring cork board in my room).

Page in Urban Geography scrapbook

The Art History scrapbook is busting 

Page in Art History Scrapbook

I used paper bags from gift shops as handy envelopes to hold other bits of information.

I highly recommend keeping some sort of travel journal or scrapbook of your travels. 
DIY
Keeping a travel journal is a great way to keep a souvenir of your adventures; a memento you can even add to down the road. If you are creative and have a bit of patience you can diy your own journal using some common, inexpensive materials. The books I used were sketch books (A4 sized) with thicker, white paper. Sketch books are great for this type of project because of the good quality paper. They will hold up better to the added weight of postcards, paper clips and random bits. You can always rely on Pinterest for having some super great links for creating your very own, very cool travel journal.

Premade
However, if you aren't so much the crafty type there are travel journals you can find online. There are loads of book sellers on  Etsy and after having a quick look myself I had to restrain myself from buying about five. (I told you I love travel journals) There is the blank-open-ended-fill-in-with-whatever-you-desire kind of journal book, like these ones found at Badbooks . Or there is also the straight up travel journal option that gives prompts with questions and suggestions of things to write about. This type is more about writing and less like a scrapbook. I'm personally drawn to the more visual, but there are some beautiful options available from Moleskine.

It's all in what you do with it and what you want to get out of your travel journal Just get travelling...and journalling.

The cork board behind my very young hear (clearly this photo is taken prior to developing my selfie game)

Do you keep a travel journal?

Fun travels!