Category: travel

When Chris and I brainstorm the place we’d like to visit next, we tend to pull from our master list of must-see countries, but every once in a while we do wax poetic about places we’ve already been. Okay, in truth it’s probably more whiny than poetic when it’s coming from me. I’m sure I’ve said, “I want to go baaack to the Cayman Islands” in a pouty voice at least two dozen times since we came home from Grand Cayman. (I may have also stomped my feet a bit; I don’t recall.) St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands is also one of our favorites because it’s an easy trip – a short flight, we know almost the whole island, and it feels comfortable and familiar. Plus we’ve had some incredibly amazing trips to the Caribbean, and who doesn’t want to recreate amazingness?

And then there are places I’ve been like Italy where I’ve only seen a small percentage of the country and I definitely want to return someday. That said, I flip-flop between, “Should we go somewhere completely new, or return to a place we’ve already been?” Lately the answer leans more toward seeing something new. I like the idea of slow, thorough exploration of the world and even rediscovering places I’ve already seen, but I also want to visit at least part of every place on our lengthy must-travel list in my lifetime, and then hopefully we can go back to the places we loved to do further exploration.

Here are my own top five reasons to visit new places.

1. Personal Growth

Embarrassing confession: for some reason I am slightly awful at remembering historical dates, names, and facts. (I’m good at remembering song lyrics, so perhaps my brain is simply too full with tunes?) It’s something I’d like to improve about myself. I’m in complete awe of people who are able to commit these details to memory, namely my Dad and my friend, Casey. Please don’t ever quiz me on all but the biggest events in the world because I admittedly won’t be able to recall the facts. I know I learned them at one time in World History classes, but it just doesn’t stick. I was pretty good at studying for exams so I was able to get good grades, but after the test…poof! The info is mostly gone except for fuzzy details. When I travel to a new country, however, it does seem to help me remember a few things, and I hope that if I keep traveling and seeing and photographing every corner of the world that I can reach, maybe I’ll commit more facts to permanent memory.

2. Geography Lessons

During my travel planning, I tend to study Google maps obsessively almost to the point that I can sometimes navigate our trip (in general) without map or GPS assistance. And then seeing the location in person just burns that geographic information into my brain, so hopefully one day I can identify nearly any country on a blank map. That would be a pretty cool party trick. Unless I was at a party full of geographers where that knowledge would impress no one.

3. Expanding the Comfort Zone

Sometimes travel requires a bit of courage. I constantly find myself in situations on our travels where I’m literally staring a fear right in the face (and I can use the word ‘literally’ there since ocean creatures have faces), but afterwards I have that awesome that wasn’t so bad feeling. I feel like that’s an important feature of our travels, since I might not have the opportunity to face those challenges otherwise. Also? Spiders. Traveling seems to introduce me to larger and larger spiders and other creepy critters every time, so perhaps I’ll eventually overcome my greatest fear and just be like, “Oh is that a tarantula in the room with me? No big deal.” I have goosebumps just from typing that sentence, so I’m definitely still quite a ways off from overcoming that fear. Doing an Amazon Rainforest tour to see Macaw parrots sounds amazing, but I’ll have to work on that spider thing first since the region is home to over two million insect species. Greaaat.

4. Language

I love different languages, dialects, and accents, and I really enjoy trying to learn common phrases and greetings. Even just pronouncing cities and street names properly is a fun challenge for me. I took French for all four years in high school and then a few semesters in college, and sadly I haven’t traveled to any francophone regions yet (well, other than parts of Switzerland). Someday soon I’ll visit France and see if I can still parler Français.

5. Change of Scenery

A change of scenery is often just what the doctor ordered for nearly anything. Seeing new places is a humbling experience for me and always provides an inspirational perspective on life. The most stressful problem in my own life can all of a sudden feel completely miniscule when I think about what a teeny tiny speck I am on this planet amongst billions of other specks, and I appreciate that reminder. I also feel more alive when I travel, and I say if you can find something that makes you feel alive, do it! (Unless it’s harmful or like, a criminal activity. Don’t do that.)

So what about you? Do you tend to enjoy sticking to your favorite spots, or do you prefer to venture out and explore new places? Or do you have a hard time deciding like I do?

And now for a peek inside my inner geek – how I use Microsoft OneNote to obsessively organize my travel plans! Have you ever used OneNote for work or school? It’s great for that, but I find it incredibly useful for keeping all of our current and upcoming travel plans neat and accessible. And just one note (ha, pun intended) upfront – I’m not getting paid by Microsoft or anything; I just love OneNote that much!

So first, a quick introduction to OneNote. It’s an application within the Microsoft Office suite that allows you to capture and store notes from your ideas, websites, files, emails, and so on. It’s basically the digital version of a three-ring binder (or a Trapper Keeper for my fellow 80s kids). A notebook holds tabbed sections, and within each section you can have multiple pages.

image courtesy of OneNote

You can type or even write freehand notes in any of the sections of a notebook, and then add items like photos, spreadsheets or graphs to go along with your notes. There’s also an import feature where you can send emails or documents straight into OneNote. This feature especially makes it perfect for keeping track of travel documents. Plus, everything is stored in the OneDrive cloud so all the information in my notebooks syncs between my desktop PC, my Mac laptop, my iPhone and my iPad and that means I always have access to the information. I installed the free software on my desktop PC, and downloaded free apps for the Mac and iPad/iPhone. Oh and yes, I’m a Mac AND a PC! So it’s especially awesome that OneNote plays nicely across all platforms.

I have several notebooks created for various topics. For example, in my Health & Fitness notebook I keep workout ideas, meal plans, and favorite recipes, and in my House Projects notebook I have sections for each room of the house with to-do lists of upcoming projects. But my favorite use for OneNote is for travel planning. I don’t typically use it for small weekend getaways or for trips that we make repeatedly like Colorado, but here’s how I use it for our bigger trips that require more planning.

First, I create a new notebook for the trip and title it by destination and year. This just helps me keep everything for one trip separate and defined. In the photo below, you can see my notebooks along the left-hand side, and the sections for the current notebook (Iceland 2014) are across the top in little colored tab shapes just like sections in a binder.

Throughout my travel planning, I create section tabs to go along with the information that I need to organize. I develop our itinerary by creating a section with a spreadsheet page (I told you – so geeky!). When I receive emails with travel details such as flight info, hotel reservations, and car rental confirmations, those emails get filed away in the trip notebook. Since I use Outlook for email, I can easily organize those emails by clicking the Send to OneNote button and selecting the notebook and section in which I want a copy of the email to appear. If you aren’t using Outlook, check here for instructions on how to send emails to OneNote.

Here’s how it looks when I send an email from Outlook to OneNote (note that I’m “Mr. Susan Marks” for some reason in the email):

Sometimes I keep each of the trip’s confirmations in their own separate sections (e.g., flight, hotel, car rental, etc.), and other times it makes more sense to bundle it together into one section with a page for each confirmation. The organization possibilities are quite flexible, so you can do whatever makes the most sense to you. For our Iceland trip, I have a separate Hotels tab since we’ll be staying in several hotels. I gave each hotel its own page within the section so that I can easily find the information. The next image is an example of a section with multiple pages. Look on the right-hand side and you’ll see pages for some of our outings in Grand Cayman. Some of the sections are email confirmations from things that we booked, and other sections are just my notes on places we wanted to see. Oh, and the Port Authority page is just the cruise ship schedule for the week we were there so I’d know when the beaches might be most crowded.

Other sections I usually create: sites we want to see, website links or articles related to our destination, photo & video ideas, to-do lists, and packing lists. Pages within sections can easily be moved or copied into other notebooks, so I end up reusing my packing lists for trips with similar needs (e.g., beach, ski, adventure, etc.).  And when it’s time to pack, I can either use the app to check off the items as I pack, or sometimes I print the page and use it as a paper checklist. Speaking of printing, I’m a huge fan of technology obviously, but I also firmly believe in having a Plan B in the case of tech failure, so I do print several pages in my travel notebook before we leave. For that reason, it’s awesome to have everything gathered in one place so when I’m ready to print, I just have to select the sections or pages that I need to have in printed copy.

I’m admittedly terrible at budgeting, but OneNote could be useful for planning a budget in advance, and then updating an expense tracker spreadsheet while you’re traveling. Something else you can do on-the-road is snap a photo of your luggage claim ticket and attach the photo right into OneNote in case you lose the actual ticket.

And one last handy feature for travel – keeping emergency information all in one spot accessible by all of your devices. You can create a notebook for holding a scanned copy of your passport, emergency contact numbers and addresses, medical information, and insurance information (health, auto, and travel). Of course, just keep in mind that if this info is accessible to you on your phone or tablet it’s potentially accessible to anyone else who finds your unlocked device should you lose it, so you should definitely password-protect sensitive data, which is available as an option through OneNote. It’s comforting to know I could access my documents at a hotel computer or Internet cafe kiosk if I lost my devices on the road.

So what do you think? Will you try OneNote to plan your next adventure, or have you used it already? I’m a huge fan, even if it I can’t slap Lisa Frank stickers all over it like I did with my Trapper Keeper. Let me know if you have questions about OneNote, and happy planning!