Travel Journal

I’ve been keeping my eye open for the perfect travel journal for my trip to England/Egypt…and by “keeping my eye open”, I mean spending literally hours online shopping on Etsy, Ebay, and Google.

I thought at first I wanted something specifically Egyptian-looking, but there are very few Egyptian-themed journals out there, and none at all that I liked.  So then I broadened the search.  I knew a few things it had to have:

1) It had to have some sort of buckle or catch to keep it closed.  I’m going to be stuffing all sorts of loose items in there, like ticket stubs, and I don’t want them to easily fall out.  I also don’t like the type that has a thin lace or strip of leather that wraps around to hold it closed.  I used one of those once, and you just can’t lace them tightly enough to keep things secure.  I love the journals that have a built-in elastic band to hold the book closed, but I didn’t want something so modern for this particular journal.

2) I wanted something that looked old-world.  Leather, or wood.

3) I wanted something sturdy, that would hold up to wear and only look better if it gets accidentally distressed.

4) I wanted something totally unique, and something that seemed ‘me’.  If it was sold at Amazon, it probably wasn’t going to cut it – although I did search Amazon as part of my quest.

I found some amazing journals.  Like this one:

It’s made of WOOD, and the pages are 80 year-old reclaimed paper.  I love it.  It’s wonderful.  But ultimately, it’s just too small, and I have questions about how easy it would be to travel with.

This journal was the stand-out front runner for quite awhile.

But alas, no buckle either, and this one is actually a squidge too big.

But then I found this one, on Etsy.  It’s handmade, in the Philippines.  It’s leather, it has buckles, it’s totally different from everything else I was finding.  And, it calls out to me.  It wants to go to Egypt with me.

It fits all of my requirements.  So Reader, I bought it.