I visited Turkey, years ago, in a circle to Greece, Turkey and Israel, when I was a student. I am pretty sure I went back again. When?
Answer
I should have a list of all my travels at the back of my Family History book on the page which records travels.
Story
I wrote down the years in the margin and filled in the details each year after I got the family history book.
I added the previous years every time I found a photo with a date on the back. Old passports had visa stamps with entry and exit dates. I had other documents: airline tickets, theatre tickets, letters from travel agents, ferry tickets. I found cultural and travel events brochures such as This Week in Malta which told me the date of my trip to that country. Similarly, I have lots of magazines with notices or advertisements for events in the capital city of a country I visited.
A cuttings about the homes of famous people, writers, artists from islands in Greece or Indonesia told me which year I visited the country. All sorts of items, receipts for dresses, or jewellery, ethnic clothes, bookshops, travel guides for the year I visited the country, or camera repair shops, or anything else saved from a trip which showed the year I'd visited the country.
I am constantly amazed at the number of old items with dates which turn up in my cluttered files. I write a poem or phone number on the back of a bus ticket. Years later I look in an old shoe box, decide whether I need my hand-written note, wonder whether to throw it away, then realise that what's on the back is equally interesting because it gives me the date of an event.
At first we all went on holidays together. Now we have different career paths ad opportunities and do a lot of solo trips. So I've started adding the initials of different family members, with a key, to show who went on each trip.
I used to come back from holidays with brochures in my luggage. But luggage got overweight, so I packed the clothes and items I knew were up to the limit on my outward journey, with the heavy brochures in a tote bag or carrier bag.
When I got home I often had two or more bags with brochures, plus maps, tickets and other items in jacket pockets. So did other members of the family.
I gathered everything together in one shoe box. That looked tidier and with a lid items did not spill everywhere. A labelled box was easier to locate than four plastic bags. I often found we had duplicates. The cover of a duplicate brochure could be pasted onto the box lid. A tip I learned from a friend in Washington DC who had moved house many times was to label every box on all sides.
Tips
Shoe Boxes
Keep a Shoe box labelled with the country you visited and the year and dates of the visit.
Photos
Label all photos with place, country, date, person visiting or person photographed.
Languages
Keep pronunciation guides from the airline magazine. If the magazine must be left on the plane or is too bulky, photograph the vital page. Print it and keep it in the country box.
Labels
For a pretty label, you could cut the printed word out of the cover of a brochure. You could also instead of throwing away old items, use them for a mosaic collage to cover your shoe box or travel diary. Either random overlapping pieces glued on, or cut neatly into jig saw pieces. For the jig-saw, take a jig-saw the size of the box cover, or larger if you want larger pieces, or copy a jig-saw design from the internet, print, lay over stiff card and cut pieces from stiff card as templates.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have other blogs on blogger.com on grammar and spelling and public speaking and comic poetry. Please follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. Like my pages and share them.
I am the author of a book called How To Get Out Of The Mess You're In which you can look at and buy on Lulu.com Other books I have written are on Lulu.com and Amazon.com, new and second hand.
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