Travel Diary Examples: 7 Real Entries to Inspire Your Own Journal

• Woke up 5am for Fushimi Inari (empty, magical, worth it)
• Thousands of torii gates. Lost count at 200.
• Best photo: the one with no one else in it (took 45 minutes to get)
• Lunch: ¥1,200 ramen. Too hot to eat, too good to wait.
• Afternoon: Gion district. Spotted one geisha. She walked faster than I could follow.
• Feet: broken. Heart: full.
• Tomorrow: slow day at Arashiyama. Need it.

The medina sounds like nowhere else. It starts with the call to prayer at dawn—not one mosque but dozens, slightly out of sync, their voices overlapping like waves. Then comes the mechanical: scooters threading through spaces too narrow for them, their horns a constant conversation. The human layer: vendors calling "just looking, my friend, just looking", children laughing somewhere above street level, the rhythmic thunk of metalworkers in the souk.

The smell changes every ten meters. Here: leather from the tanneries, sharp and ancient. Three steps forward: mint tea brewing somewhere invisible. Turn a corner: tagine, the slow-cooked sweetness of lamb and apricot that seems to seep from the walls themselves.

I bought a rug today. Not because I needed one—because of how it felt. Rough wool, hand-woven in the Atlas Mountains according to the seller (who knows if it's true). When I pressed my palm against it, I could feel each thread, imperfect and deliberate. The color was somewhere between rust and sunset. I'll think of this day every time I step on it.

Dinner at Café Clock. Camel burger. (I know.) The meat was darker than beef, slightly gamey, nothing like the novelty I expected. The harissa on top burned in the best way. A cat sat under our table the entire meal, patient and hopeful.

Temperature: still hot at 9pm, but the riad courtyard had that specific coolness that comes from stone and water and generations of thoughtful architecture.

I'm sitting by the fountain now, listening to it, smelling the jasmine that climbs the wall. This is travel journaling at its best: trying to bottle something unbottleable.

"This doesn't look right."

Sarah was staring out the window at what was definitely not the Algarve coast. Instead of beaches and tourist resorts, we were passing through industrial outskirts, warehouses, a man walking a goat along the tracks.

I checked the ticket. Porto → Faro. I checked the train display. Porto → Lisbon.

We were on the wrong train.

Two hours later, we were back at Porto station, €47 poorer (the price of new tickets), with the original train long gone. The next one to Faro didn't leave until 6pm. We had five hours to kill in a city we'd already seen.

"We could go back to the hotel and sulk," Sarah suggested.

"Or?"

"Or we could find that restaurant the taxi driver mentioned. The one his grandmother likes."

We found it, three neighborhoods away from anywhere we'd been, up a hill that required a water break. It was closed. But the woman inside saw us through the window, sweaty and pathetic, and opened the door anyway.

"You want to eat?"

We nodded.

She sat us at a plastic table in a back room that was probably her living room. She brought out bread, then sardines, then potatoes, then wine that came in a jug without a label. There was no menu. There was no bill—she named a number that couldn't possibly have been correct. We tried to give her more. She refused.

"Next time," she said, "take the right train."

We made the 6pm train. Got to Faro at midnight. The hotel had given away our room. We slept on the beach.

Best day of the trip.

Photo 1: La Boqueria, 8:17am

Got here before the tourists. A vendor gave us free jamón because we were the only customers. It tasted like Spain distilled into meat. I bought €30 worth of cheese I didn't need.

Photo 2: Random alley in El Born

Took this because of the light—the way it fell between buildings, turning everything gold. Spent 15 minutes trying to photograph it. The photo doesn't capture it. It never does.

Photo 3: Sagrada Familia interior

Gaudí said he was building a "forest of stone." He wasn't kidding. The columns branch like trees. The light through the stained glass makes everything feel like a fever dream. I sat in a pew for 45 minutes doing nothing.

Photo 4: Dinner at El Xampanyet

€2 glasses of cava. €4 plates of anchovies. Standing room only, everyone shouting to be heard. We stayed for three hours and spent €25 each. This is how it's supposed to work.

Photo 5: View from Bunkers del Carmel at sunset

The tourist viewpoints are fine. This one is better. Locals outnumbered visitors 3:1. Someone was playing guitar. We watched the city light up. Didn't talk much.

I'm grateful for:

1. The rainbow over Milford Sound this morning. It appeared for maybe three minutes. I happened to look up at exactly the right moment.

2. The German couple at the hostel who invited us to share their dinner when they made too much pasta. We talked for two hours about places we've all been. They've been traveling for seven months. I'm a little jealous.

3. The hostel cat who slept on my feet. I didn't want to move and wake her up, so I read for an extra hour. It was exactly the excuse I needed.

4. Working hot water. The last hostel didn't have it. Never taking hot showers for granted again.

5. This view. I'm sitting on a bench overlooking a fjord, and for some reason the whole place is empty. Just me, the water, and the mountains. I've never seen anything this dramatic in my life. The photos won't do it justice. I'm trying to memorize it instead.

One small moment:

A kid on the ferry asked if I was an explorer. I said yes. He gave me a high five.

What I want to remember:

The sound of nothing. Not silence—the particular kind of quiet that only exists in places like this. Wind, water, birds, no engines, no voices. I didn't realize how much noise I live with until it was gone.

Transportation:

• Suica card is essential. Buy at airport, reload at any station.
• Today's metro: ¥850 total (6 trips). Would have been ~¥1,400 in single tickets.
• Google Maps is accurate for train times. JR trains and metro are different systems but same card works.
• Rush hour (8-9am, 6-7pm) is intense. Avoid if possible.

Food costs:

• Breakfast: skipped (still full from yesterday)
• Lunch: conveyor belt sushi in Shibuya, ¥1,800 for 12 plates. Excellent value.
• Dinner: Izakaya in Golden Gai, ¥4,500 for two (drinks included). Tiny bar, 8 seats, amazing atmosphere.
• Snacks: 7-Eleven onigiri (¥150), matcha Kit-Kat (¥300), canned coffee (¥120)

Total daily spend: ¥12,500 ($85 USD)

What worked:

• Reservations at popular restaurants (booked 2 weeks ahead)
• Packing extra socks (walking 20k+ steps/day)
• Pocket WiFi rental (¥800/day, infinitely useful)

What didn't:

• Trying to see Shibuya Crossing at sunset. Too crowded to appreciate.
• Wearing nice shoes. Ruined.

Pro tip discovered:

The observation deck at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is free and has better views than Skytree. No line either.

Rating: 9/10 (losing 1 point for the shoe situation)

I've been traveling alone for almost a month now.

The first week, I was lonely. Aggressively, painfully lonely. I'd sit in restaurants staring at couples and groups, feeling sorry for myself, rushing through meals because eating alone felt like a verdict.

The second week, something shifted. I started sitting longer. Ordering dessert. Watching people instead of envying them. I had dinner with a family in Hoi An because they saw me alone and waved me over. That doesn't happen when you're traveling with someone.

This week, I realized: I like myself as company.

That sounds obvious. It wasn't. I'd never spent this much unstructured time in my own head. At home, there's always noise—work, friends, scrolling, busy-ness. Here, there's just me. And it turns out I'm not as boring as I thought.

I talked to a monk today at a temple in Da Nang. (He spoke English—studied in Australia.) I asked him about meditation. He said most Westerners misunderstand it. "You think meditation is about quieting the mind," he said. "It's about learning to sit with whatever is there."

That's what this trip has been. Learning to sit with whatever is there.

I'm not the same person who boarded the plane in March. I'm not sure who I'll be when I get home. That used to scare me. Now it just feels true.

What I'm carrying forward:

• Eating alone is fine. It's better than fine.
• I don't need as much noise as I thought.
• Boredom isn't the enemy. It's the doorway to something else.