Celebrating Trip Memories

Yesterday was St. George's Day, England's National Day. My husband is English so we sometimes do something special to recognize it.

I planned to make fish and chips, but then upon request changed it to jacket potatoes as the English call it (baked potatoes). I was happy that my daughter was home because she thought of making scones with cream and jam to serve with tea in the afternoon. How perfect.

I love that she's wearing a sweatshirt she bought on our last trip to England. We also used our England cups and sugar bowl I bought at Harrods in London. The sugar bowl and cup and saucer were purchased in 2018 while I bought the "Harrods Knightsbridge" cup on my first trip to England in 1992.

My daughter thought to post the event on social media, even if I didn't.

I was reminded of St. George's Day yesterday morning when I checked my TimeHop app and saw my Facebook post from 10 years ago.

This made me think of other national days I could celebrate to be reminded of travel memories. I could use the National Day or the date I travelled to prepare a special meal or go to a restaurant/pub that serves food from that place.

Here are some example that I could choose from:

• Australia Day - January 26
• St. Patrick's Day - Ireland - March 17
• St. George's Day - England - April 23
• Cinco de Mayo (Mexico) - May 5 or Grito de Dolores - Sept. 16
• Saint-Jean-Baptiste - Quebec - June 24 
• Canada Day - July 1
• United States Independence Day - July 4
• Bastille Day - France - July 14
• Switzerland National Day - August 1
• Barbados Independence Day - November 30

Here's a list of national days by country if you like the idea and want to celebrate your past trips or even dream of places you want to visit in the future:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_day

An easy way to remember the travel dates is to look in our passports. Click here to read my blog post about the passport journal I created. I added the holiday dates and travel dates to my calendar with a reminder a week before to plan the celebration if I want.

I made a small 7x7 photo book with photos from my phone of our last trip to England.

It only took a couple of hours. I chose 80 photos (maximum for the company I was ordering from). It's one photo per page and we can add a line of text per page.

I didn't think to look at it yesterday, but I did this morning.  These types of travel books or digital books could be added to the festivities by reminiscing and rembering the stories of our trips.

Having a date to celebrate, can also give a deadline to complete a photobook or digital album of our best trip photos that are lost in the clutter of our digital files.