There is no hangover quite so strong and painful as the days or weeks following a long holiday. Sitting in an office lamenting the lack of hot weather and thinking of brilliant white sandy beaches and restaurants that served seafood and cocktails and… regular life just doesn’t cut it in comparison.
However, I’ve found a few ways to overcome the winter blues and replace them with ocean blues…
Share it on social media
Social media is a great on-the-go way of preserving and sharing your memories. It can also be a method for shaping the trip as it goes. You never know what mid-trip suggestions or hookups you’ll get via social media. Try using hashtags and asking questions about recommended restaurants, great drinking spots, activities and cultural locations. Who knows — maybe one of your friends will be in the same spot at the same time!
You can also use Pinterest to do the heavy lifting of planning beforehand, just by searching for your desired destination and seeing what pops up. It’s also great for keeping track of all the places you’ve visited. I made a Pinterest board and Pinned all the places I’ve traveled to, and when, with a comment or two and my favorite picture from that trip.
For public photo sharing, use Instagram to record and show off your superb images; a private account for your kids will let them record their photographs on-the-go. There are lots of services that will turn your Instagram pics into albums, magnets, posters, etc. with almost no effort from you.
I also like to make private Google Photos albums and share them with friends and family. If you install the Google Photos app on your phone (and Picasa on your computer), you can set it to automatically backup all your photos (you may want to set this to WiFi-only if you’re not on an unlimited roaming mobile data plan), just in case you lose your phone.
When I have the time, I make photobook yearbooks and albums of all the places we went. I print them up for myself and my parents — they love them, and it’s a nice way to look back and appreciate the past years. I’ve tried a bunch of services for this and found MyPublisher to produce the best quality photos in their photobooks. Although they have less fun design options (like stickers, etc.), the ones they do have are sophisticated and elegant, which is what I like. And they have lots of sales, so sign up for their newsletter and you can make the photobooks now, and wait for a sale to buy. Make sure to save an ‘export’ / backup of the photobook file somewhere safe, and always get ‘super gloss printing’ (it’s worth it).
Turn it into wall art
Once you’ve booked epic trip number two (or maybe more), it’s time to relive other adventures, in giant form. Photobox personalised prints are a great place to start. They can help you make collages, montages or giant scenes and print them on hard-wearing canvas. These can then be used to breathe life into plain rooms at home or revitalize an office.
Who remembers digital frames? No-one seems to have them on their shelves anymore, for various reasons (lack of interactivity and picture quality). Sales fell through the floor but the newer models prove the product might be on its way back, such as this 4k Klio version.
Write about it
Writing about your experiences is a great way of reliving them, and preserving memories that might fade away. You could try writing an article about the destination you went to and submitting it to established publications like Urbanette. It’s a great boost to your CV, and a published article is a great memento of your trip (and writing acumen!)
It might even push you into learning coding/design, although new web templates allow you to upload and create splendid galleries with little technical knowledge. Remember to always break up text with video, pictures and social media statuses.
Go old-school, in a new way
I know, I know. Who uses paper calendars anymore? My mom, for one. Digital is in nowadays, but there’s something to be said for old-school paper calendars. Not only do photo calendars enable you to plan your year ahead – including that trek through Europe that you’ve always wanted to tackle – but they also let you relive past glories. It’s a year today since you reached that temple in Cambodia and five years since the week in Morocco – awesome times.
Don’t want a monthly calendar? Get a cool daily one using 365 of your Instagram photos. Same your favorites and stick them on a cork board.
Make your memories POP
Whatever you make with your photos, make sure to edit them first. And I don’t mean to remove wrinkles or zits. BeFunky will make your photos POP by adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. You can even add filters, text and cool effects. Oh yeah — and you can fix that pesky zit, too.
Go again
The easiest way to reduce the symptoms of travel sickness is to book another trip. Perhaps you’ll visit the same twisting lanes and street food again, or maybe this time you’ll trek jungles or mountains. Devote a morning to researching the possibilities (check out our Destination Guides or Adventure Travel articles), recruit friends and/or family, get out your credit card, and set off on another memorable trip!
What do you do when you want to relive your vacations?
Where do you want to go next?
Photobooks are really nice. What I dislike about technology nowadays is that I still prefer old school photo albums than Facebook albums. Even CDs and hard drives aren’t reliable sources of photos because they can deteriorate over time or get corrupted. Your Facebook account can suddenly not be retrieved and the memories that you’ve saved in these albums will go *POOF*. If you have kids and you want to treasure their memories, print photos and make scrapbook albums or photo books. Yes, these will get old too but I really think that the more these memories will feel like memories because of age.
I agree. There are a lot of memory preserving things but it’s quite expensive.
Thank you thank you for the links! They’re really helpful and I could really use ideas.
Wow! Those photobooks that you have look stunning. I bet it would also look great on the shelves! I want one.
My problem with Instagram sharing is that if you’re the type of person who takes random shots in travels, your Insta feed will be full of unnecessary photos. I like Facebook better for these type of purposes. Nothing beats Facebook for recording memories. Another thing that you could probably do is make a blog about your travels. You can even include place reviews and people will appreciate what you’ve shared because they can use it as a reference. It can even lead you to a blog monetization.
Great ideas. We all want to make sure that our memories are preserved!??
If only I’m a frequent traveler so that I can have a lot of travel photos. I only ravel a couple of times a year but I still treasure those memories.
Travelling is a journey to self-discovery; it gives you context in learning new things, do fun and unique things that you cannot do in your comfort zone. That’s why it’s important to carry a piece of each place you visit, so that you can revisit and keep those memories alive.
Traveling to a different place lets you experience life in a different way. One of the best ways I’ve found to relive the memories of an especially fantastic trip with mu boyfriends is to post shots and images of our travels on social media. Not sure what to post? It doesn’t have to be perfect and awesome just memorable. This article is really helpful and interesting, that’s why I’ve already bookmarked this one. I can’t even tell you how much I love this post, thanks for sharing this.
I used to collect postcards and rocks on my travels. I really love this post! tnx.:)
I like to collect magnets. My fridge is a giant collage of photos and magnets!
Awesome, I love all the different ideas that everyone has on the different things to collect on their travels. I have a lot of shots in my phone from our trips and i will view them over and over again. I like it when I get gifts from the locals .?
Maybe, this is mainly what helps me recall the pleasant experiences. I love the calendar and would definitely love to have one, i will display it in my room.