Using the Moleskine City Notebook: Paris

I have two of the Moleskine City Notebooks, one for New York (where I live) and one for Paris. I bought it for my first trip there a couple of months ago, and I really loved having it.

Paris is the kind of place that is so constantly featured in newspaper and magazine articles– the Moleskine book gave me a place to jot down all the ideas that appealed to me. I’d also been given many suggestions by friends, which also went into the Moleskine. Finally, I made notes from a travel guide that I’d gotten for free– it was a big fat book, not the kind of thing anyone would really want to have in their bag while trying to travel light. Since I was only going for a short trip anyway, I loved being able to customize my own guidebook to focus on just the things that I knew I wanted to do, while still having all the maps I needed to get around, and blank pages for adding new notes on the go. The three ribbon markers in the book came in handy for marking map pages and my notes about my next destination.

I very much hope to visit Paris again soon– if I could, I think I’d go once a year! I love the idea of having my own travel guide and address book for a city, and being able to build it over the years as I learn more about a place. I used to go to London frequently for work and pleasure, and I wish I’d had one of these city notebooks to capture all my favorite haunts there and replace the A-to-Z map book I always had to carry there anyway, even once I knew the city well! I may have to buy a London city notebook even though I have no plans to visit again soon.

As for my New York city notebook, I’ve yet to write any information in it about my favorite places here. I don’t tend to need the maps, so I don’t carry it around. I do like having it, though, and I think it would be fun to fill it with all sorts of recommended restaurants and shops and sights so I could lend it to any friends from out of town who come to visit.

One feature I hope Moleskine might add to future printings would be an additional set of labels including some sort of little arrows or markers, perhaps with numbers. I kept thinking it would be helpful to be able to flag some key locations on the maps without having to use the translucent overlay sheets

2 thoughts on “Using the Moleskine City Notebook: Paris”

  1. I used the London City notebook when I was travelling there and used it as a scrapbook journal. It was a little smaller than I could have used, I like the next size up hardcovers better, but the elastic really kept everything in place. The maps really helped!

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