What to Write in a Travel Journal: Notes Worth Keeping
Updated November 10, 2026
Write down what a photo cannot show: who you were with, where you stayed, what it cost, what went wrong and what you would do again. Three or four lines per stop, written within a few days, are worth more ten years later than a long entry you never get round to.
What you will want in ten years
People who reread old travel notes rarely look for descriptions of famous sights, which are a search away. They look for the things only they knew. A short entry for each stop that answers the same few questions makes old trips usable as well as memorable.
| Question | Example note | Why it lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Who was there? | With Mina and her brother | Names fade faster than places |
| Where did you stay? | Guesthouse above the bakery on the harbour road | You will want to find it again or tell a friend |
| What did it cost? | About 60 a night, dinner for two 25 | Prices date a trip and help plan the next one |
| What was the best hour? | Sunrise from the fort before the buses came | The reason you would go back |
| What went wrong? | Ferry cancelled, lost a day | The honest part, and often the best story |
| What would you do differently? | Two nights, not four | Advice to your future self |
Keep it short enough to keep doing
The usual reason a travel journal stops is that the first entries were too ambitious. A page a day is easy on the first evening and impossible by the second week. Set a format you can fill in on a bus: place, date, three lines. A note on this site can hold 4,000 characters per stop, which is roughly two printed pages, but most useful notes are under 300.
Write soon, not necessarily on the day
Details go quickly. Within a week you can still recall the name of the street and what you paid. After a month you remember the outline and the photographs. If you did not write during the trip, do it on the journey home, with your photo library open to prompt you. The order of the photos gives you the order of the stops, and each stop then needs only its three lines.
One note per stop, one for the trip
Two levels are enough. The stop note holds what belongs to that place: the room, the meal, the walk. The trip note holds what belongs to the whole journey: why you went, how you got there, what the weather did, the total cost, and the one thing you would tell someone planning the same route. Open a stop in the trip editor to write its note, and use Trip notes at the bottom for the rest.
Things worth recording that people forget
- How you travelled between stops and how long it really took, not what the timetable said.
- Names of people you met, and how to reach them if you exchanged details.
- What you ate that you could not get at home, with its local name.
- Anything you booked in advance that turned out to be necessary, or unnecessary.
- The day you would cut and the day you would add.
Keep private notes private
A journal is only honest if you are sure who can read it. On this site, notes are stored in your browser and are never uploaded. They are left out of share links and out of exported images, so you can show someone the map without showing them the diary. They are included in the backup file, which is the one thing to handle with care: it contains every note you have written.
Old trips
For journeys from years ago, do not try to reconstruct a diary. Write what you still know: one line for each stop and a longer note for the trip as a whole. Ask the people who travelled with you for the detail you have lost; their memory will hold different pieces. A thin record of an old trip is far better than none, and it tends to grow, because once a trip is on the map small memories have somewhere to go.
Try it on your own map
Questions and answers
- How long should a travel journal entry be?
- Short enough that you will write the next one. Three or four lines per stop is a sustainable length, and it captures who, where, cost and the best moment.
- Are my notes included when I share my map?
- No. Share links and exported images contain countries, stops and dates only. Notes stay on your device and appear only in your backup file.
- Is there a limit on note length?
- Each note can hold up to 4,000 characters. There is one note per stop and one for the trip as a whole.