Research Your Travel Essay--Part II

Carry A Notebook
Always carry a small notebook to document, document, and document some more.

• Record overheard conversations that strike you as interesting or revealing of cultural distinction.
• Record your reflections about the effect of a place: a few sentences about how a place makes you feel, and how that feeling connects to other experiences you've had. 
• Write down proper nouns and adjectives from a tour guide's speech; that way, you have precision in the basics and can later research to find out more.
• Document the sounds, smells and visuals everywhere you go. Do it on the spot or at night, collected and documented in the tranquility of your room. 
• If you're lucky enough to be the recipient of a song--as I was from a group of children wandering home from school in Samoa--breathe deeply, listen carefully, and when they finally wander off again, madly scribble down every word and lilting note. Collect stories about encounters with children, and you'll have a lovely tale to tell. 
• Sketch, rather than photograph an interesting doorway, an intriguing shape in a painting, a table and chair sitting empty next to you in a sidewalk cafe. (Sketch while you sip and nibble, and you will live longer.) Tuck a tiny set of watercolors into your bag to create quick, colorful impressions. You will be amazed at how quickly the mood of such an encounter is preserved and recalled each time you look at the sketch or small painting.

Collect Ephemera

• I bring home paper coasters, ticket stubs, hotel stationery, postcards, business cards, and such. I still use a paper coaster from Soba, an Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam where my mother and I dined with our tour guide twenty-five years ago; it reminds me of how much she enjoyed the multilingual tour guide's lively company. Every time I see the illustrated exhibit ticket for a Bonnard and Matisse exhibit at Victor Emmanuel Monument Museum in Rome pasted in my notebook, I laugh remembering the guard who flirted with my friend, telling her that he "wanted an American woman because Italian women were too expensive." There's surely a story there. 
• Take, buy and carry maps of your destination. Collect hand-drawn maps from hotels, tourist kiosks, and restaurants. use them for guidance and keep them for information and illustration. 
• I still have a small poster advertising a Parisian book fair that I noticed in a bookstore window twenty years ago. Because the fair had just ended, the shopkeeper gave me the poster. It shows books stacked on a chair in an ancient library and the phrase, Vous etes chez vous, which, though I know better, I've always translated as, "You are most at home with yourself and books."
• A business card in Italian, taped in my 2011 notebook, reminds me that Marcello, who is most likely the kindest cab driver in Rome, speaks fluent English. And now that I think of it, I have some stories about other cab drivers to tell--that one in Samoa, named Rambo, who offered a tour of the island, and the family man in Washington D. C. whose zestful narration sparkled with pride in "his" town all the way to  BWI. These stories would make a nice "round up" travel article that shows how the real flavor of a city reveals itself in a speeding yellow cab. 

Keepsakes are for keeping and reminiscing--and for sharing too.

Talk to Locals, Ask Questions, Listen

When I was a child in the 1950s, probably about ten years old, I wandered around Balboa Island (Southern California) one day when kids could still do that and came upon an old Craftsman bungalow with a broad front porch facing the bay. 

The wide painted railings surrounding the porch and many wood shelves contained dozens of jars of sea specimens--jelly fish, octopus, sea horses and so forth, all floating in formaldehyde. I was fascinated and spent many hours that summer talking to the old man about his life-long collection. That experience probably initiated my own life-long love of he sea and its gifts. Although I don't have an actual photo of his specimens, the one in my mind is crisp and fresh. You can get good information and enduring memories from local residents. 

Go With A Purpose

Decide on a focus before leaving on your trip (and leave leeway for changing your mind). You might plan to "research" local weekend markets in Barcelona, or study the methods of cappuccino-making in Rome, or test all seven Paris city walks that the guidebook recommends. After such concentrated research, you're ready with a topic for a travel article, one about food centered on the variety of greens Barcelonans cook with, another concerning the saucy language of Roman baristas, or a delicious analysis of the flakiness of Parisian croissants determined through pointed visits to every boulangerie on each of the seven walks!

That's it--plan now, keep records, compose in tranquility. Buon Viaggio!