How to Make a Pocket Travel Journal You’ll Actually Use

I have abandoned many beautiful travel journals. There were big ones with thick, creamy pages, leather ones that smelled like a library and one with a little brass clasp that cost more than I will ever admit to my mother. They were all gorgeous, but they were also too precious and too heavy, so they stayed in the hotel room while the actual trip happened outside without them. More than once, I came home with a stunning journal that contained two entries and a pressed napkin.

So for my last trip, I made one rule: if it didn’t fit in my coat pocket, it didn’t come.

The pocket travel journal kit

Here is everything I brought, and it was only four things.

A slim, passport-sized notebook. It needs to be small enough to slip into a pocket and sturdy enough to survive being sat on. Mine has plain pages, so I can draw, glue and write sideways whenever I feel like it.

One pen that writes on anything. A fine-tip permanent marker works on receipts, tickets and glossy paper without smudging, so choose one you love and guard it with your life.

A tiny glue stick. The mini ones from the kids’ aisle are perfect, and while tape works too, glue lies flatter on the page.

A few paper clips. They hold things in place until you have time to glue them, and they mark your current page.

What went into my travel journal

Everything the city handed me went in: train tickets, café receipts, a sugar packet with a very pretty logo, a museum sticker and a pressed leaf from a park where I sat for much longer than I planned. I added the corner of a map I had already ruined, a fortune from a cookie that, I’m happy to report, turned out to be accurate, and the label off a wine bottle that I soaked off in the hotel sink.

I glued things in on the spot, at café tables, on train seats and once on a bench while a pigeon watched me with intense interest. Next to each one, I wrote a line or two about what I was doing, what I ate or what I overheard, and one page just says, “The waiter called me ‘sweetheart,’ and I let him.”

Why a small travel journal works better

It works because it was always with me, and that’s the whole secret. I wrote while waiting for coffee, on park benches, in line for something I probably didn’t need to see and on the train with my knees pulled up. The entries were short, sometimes just a few words, but they were immediate. I wasn’t trying to reconstruct the whole day at night from a distance, because I was writing it down while it happened.

A big, beautiful journal asks for a big, beautiful moment, while a pocket journal asks for nothing at all. It’s just there, ready, every time something small and wonderful happens, and on a trip, small and wonderful things happen constantly.

The best travel journal isn’t the prettiest one. It’s the one that comes along.

Tips for keeping a travel journal you’ll actually finish

Lower the bar. A single line counts, and so does a ticket glued in with a date, so you don’t have to write an essay every night.

Don’t wait for the hotel. Glue and write wherever you are, because the best entries happen in the moment.

Collect paper everywhere. Receipts, napkins, wrappers, tickets, brochures and business cards are all possible pages.

Write down what you overhear. Snippets of conversation are the funniest, most vivid parts of my journals, because strangers say incredible things.

Let it get messy. Crinkled pages, glue stains and coffee rings aren’t damage. They’re evidence!

Leave the last pages blank on purpose. When you get home, use them for the things you only realize later, like the meal you can’t stop thinking about, the phrase you picked up or the person you wish you’d talked to longer, because hindsight deserves a page, too.

When I got home

The little notebook was stuffed fat, with its cover curling and its pages crinkled from glue and one unfortunate encounter with a cappuccino. It’s one of my favorite objects now, because I can open it to any page and remember exactly which chair I was sitting in and what the light looked like.

If you want to turn your trip photos into something, too, here’s how I made a photo book from fifty bad vacation photos. And if you’re traveling by train, this journal pairs beautifully with the slow joy of train travel.