by Chanell Gautreaux

Created on: May 04, 2010

Having recently returned from my first trip requiring a passport, my feeling is that keeping a travel journal is a great idea for preserving your memories of the events and experiences you want to remember after returning home but creating a blog is the best way to share information about your travels with others.

Upon returning home from Spain the first question I encountered was “how was your trip?” followed by questions about the country itself and the things that I did and saw.  Dozens of people from friends and family members to fellow teachers and the members of my meetup group were waiting to hear all my stories and see my photos.

In the twelve days I was away from home I visited over a dozen towns and cities from Madrid in central Spain to places up north in Ribeira del Duero and Rioja as well as Sevilla and Tarifa in the south.  I covered a lot of ground and had way more experiences than I could convey in a short conversation.

Not only would it take forever just to tell one person about everything I did on my trip, I knew I could not possibly repeat the entire story over and over and over nor did I want to).  One of the reasons I made the effort to keep a detailed travel journal and photographed practically everything in sight (even the food I ate) was that I had planned to write a number of travel articles when I returned and actually had a list of potential articles before I ever left the states.

By the time my trip ended I knew composing hotel reviews and writing about places of interest would just not be the best way to share my travel experiences with everyone.  I decided to start a travel blog to post stories, photos and videos of my trip so that I could take my time relating my experiences in detail and still see to all the responsibilities and obligations of my life in the present.

I also knew that many people live vicariously through others and that some of my blog readers might never get to go to Spain, and that others might be inspired to travel there, while still others might benefit from information shared about international travel. 

By putting my travel experiences online in a blog that information is also accessible to people I don’t know who may be considering or even planning a trip to Spain in the near future and might benefit in some way from reading about my experiences.  Comparing a travel journal and a blog is really an apples vs oranges proposition.  The two serve completely different purposes.

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