10 Creative Things to Do While Traveling: Fun & Crafty Hobbies

Creative things to do while traveling can help you experience a place in a completely different way, especially when you need a break from looking at everything through your phone (it happens to all of us from time to time). I take a LOT of photos when I travel and always will, but sometimes it is nice to do something that makes you sit down, look around properly, experience the moment in its entirety, actually feel fully present, and actually create something from the place you are visiting.

Some of these ideas are easy enough to do on a train, in a café, or during a rainy afternoon, while others involve finding a local class or carrying a few extra supplies. A lot of them also leave you with something you can keep afterward, whether that is a painting, a notebook full of random memories, a slightly wonky handmade souvenir, or a roll of film you are VERY excited to develop.

Here are some of my favorite creative things to do while traveling that will take out actively out of experiencing life through your phone screen and into being more present – including a few I have done myself and others I still really want to try.

Why It Is Worth Having a Creative Hobby While Traveling

Travel can move FAST, especially when you are trying to fit a lot into one trip. You visit the landmark, take photos, move on, find food, go somewhere else, and suddenly the entire day is over.

Doing something creative makes you stop for a little longer. If you sit down to paint, sketch, write, or take photos with an actual idea in mind, you start paying more attention to what is around you. You notice the colors of the buildings, little details in the streets, things people say, the light at a certain time of day, and loads of other things you probably would have forgotten later… things that pull you into the present moment.

Creative hobbies are also great for all the random gaps that come with travel. Think long train rides, airport delays, ferries, rainy days, lazy afternoons, or mornings when everyone else is still asleep. You can scroll during all of those times, obviously, but making something is usually a lot more memorable.

Watercolor Painting

Let’s start with my favorite, because this is the hobby that started it all. A couple of years ago, I was sitting on a balcony somewhere with one of those tiny travel watercolor sets, a glass of wine, and a sunset in front of me. Instead of taking another photo, I decided to see if I could paint it instead.

I wasn’t suddenly trying to become an artist. It was much more of a “let’s see how badly this goes” situation. And even though it was messy and imperfect… I absolutely loved it.

Ever since then, watercolor has become one of my favorite creative things to do while traveling.

You Do Not Need to Know How to Draw to Watercolor ( I PROMISE)

Let me be very clear about this: you do not need ANY artistic talent to enjoy watercolor while traveling. None. Zero. Zilch.

I could barely draw a stick figure when I first picked up a paintbrush. The idea of staring at a blank page and trying to create something from scratch was genuinely intimidating, which is exactly why I ended up loving watercolor workbooks so much.

The outlines are already printed for you, so you skip the hardest part and get straight to painting instead of No wondering what to draw or staring at a blank page. You literally just open a page and start. The point is, the barrier to entry is basically zero. If you can hold a paintbrush, you can do this.

You can also use watercolor in whatever way makes sense for the trip. Paint the sunset from your balcony, copy the colors of a tiled building, try to recreate a landscape, or just fill in a workbook while watching the view from a train. It does not need to be good enough to frame or show anyone. The fun part is sitting there and doing it.

The Best Times + Places to Paint While Traveling: One of my favorite things about watercolor is how ridiculously easy it is to travel with. My little palette is tiny, my brush fits inside it, and the whole thing takes up barely any room in my backpack. I’ve painted on trains, ferries, café terraces, airport floors during delays (glamorous, I know), and while waiting for sunsets. Honestly, the weirder the location, the more fun it is.

I tried a few different ones over the years, but our favorite watercolor workbooks for beginners have been the best by far. Each one has 30 pre-sketched illustrations printed on watercolor-friendly paper, so you can just open a page and start painting! They also have fun seasonal ones so look out for those.

Travel Journaling

Travel journaling is one of the creative hobbies that’s completely up to you. It can be pages of writing every night about each experience, thought, feeling, person, and place… or it can just be a notebook full of random thoughts, funny conversations and quotes from the trip, restaurant recommendations, little sketches, and things you know you’ll forget if you don’t write them down.

I’ve found it’s never the big things that I forget after a trip. I remember climbing the mountain or seeing the famous landmark; it’s the tiny things that disappear first… the name of that amazing little bakery, the taxi driver who made me laugh for twenty minutes, the tiny wine bar we stumbled into on the way home, the random beach someone recommended that turned out to be my favorite.

You can also use a journal as part notebook and part scrapbook by sticking in tickets, labels, receipts, maps, postcards, or anything else you collect along the way, messily stuck in the order you got them to make a bit of a travel scrapbook AND journal at the same time. That way, you can look back at it and remember what each day or destination was like.

Sketching and Urban Sketching

Sketching is probably the simplest creative travel hobby because all you need is a pen or pencil and some paper. You can sit in a plaza, at a café, beside a beach, or anywhere else with something interesting in front of you and simply try to draw it. That’s it.

Urban sketching is a whole thing now, with people meeting up around the world to draw buildings, streets, markets, and everyday city scenes. You do not have to join a group or be particularly good at it, though. A quick sketch of a church, doorway, market stall, or old building is enough to make you look at it more carefully.

When you try to draw a place, you start seeing all the lines and strange little details that are easy to miss when you are only taking a quick photo. The drawing might be terrible. That is fine. Mine probably would be too. It still becomes a very specific little memory from that day.

Take a Local Craft Workshop

Taking a local craft workshop is one of the best ways to do something creative while also learning more about the place you are visiting. Different countries and regions are known for different crafts, so the class itself can become part of the trip rather than feeling like something you could have done anywhere.

A few ideas include:

• Needle felting in Tbilisi, Georgia: I did this in Tbilisi and had completely forgotten what it was called until I wrote this article. You use a tiny needle to push colored wool into shape on a foam surface, and it is a very satisfying way to spend a couple of hours and make a nice colorful piece of art.
• Tile painting in Portugal: Painted tiles are everywhere in Portugal, so making one yourself is a fun way to learn more about the designs before seeing them all over the streets afterward.
• Batik painting in Indonesia: Batik workshops show you how wax and dye are used to create patterns that look MUCH easier until you actually try doing them yourself.
• Weaving in Peru: A weaving workshop can introduce you to local techniques, colors, patterns, and the amount of work behind textiles you may otherwise only see in a market.
• Pottery workshops: Pottery is available in loads of destinations, and you usually end up with a slightly uneven bowl, cup, or plate that is much more fun to bring home than a generic souvenir.
• Cooking classes: Cooking definitely counts as creative, and it is one of the easiest options to find almost anywhere. You learn a local recipe, get to ask loads of questions about the food, and then eat whatever you made. Excellent system.

You can usually find workshops through local studios, tour platforms like Viator, or your accommodation. It is also worth searching directly for the craft plus the city, because some of the smaller local classes never make it onto the larger booking sites.

Photography With an Actual Camera

Photography is still one of my favorite creative things to do while traveling, and I do not think it belongs in the same category as taking 400 nearly identical photos on your iPhone. When I use my Sony, I pay much more attention to composition, light, framing, depth, and the actual photo I am trying to create.

You do not need a huge DSLR setup either to get into travel photography. A small mirrorless camera, compact point-and-shoot, disposable camera, or the best for a creative travel hobby – a film camera – can all make you approach a place differently.

I have always wanted to travel with a film camera because I love the idea of waiting until later to see how everything turned out. Film photos usually have that grainy, imperfect, slightly vintage look that makes them feel like old memories immediately, and not being able to check every shot would probably make the whole thing more exciting.

You can also give yourself small photography challenges while traveling. Try photographing only reflections for an afternoon, looking for one color around the city (or, while your friend looks for another), using a single focal length, shooting in black and white, or focusing on tiny macro details instead of famous landmarks.

Another fun way to see a place differently is using a Lensball, which turns views, portraits, signs, patterns, and landscapes upside down inside the glass. I have a whole guide to creative Lensball photography ideas, including different ways to hold it, position it, photograph reflections, and use it with water or typography.

Collect Paper Memories

This is one of my favorite creative things to do while traveling because it costs absolutely nothing, takes up basically no space, and ends up becoming one of the most personal souvenirs you can bring home. It’s almost more of a byproduct of consciously NOT throwing things away from all your touristing and activities, lol.

I keep tickets and paper things from my travels in my laptop case while I travel, and now I have an entire drawer full of all these paper memories from my travels. Boarding passes, museum tickets, train tickets, maps, business cards, luggage tags, receipts from memorable dinners, little information cards from museums… basically anything flat that reminds me of a specific moment.I even have a few pressed four-leaf clovers my mum found years ago that I’ve kept safe ever since, along with flowers I’ve pressed from different places I’ve visited.

Every now and then I’ll pull everything out and scrapbook with it, or I’ve even thought about turning some of my favorites into resin art. Looking through them always brings back memories I’d completely forgotten about. Sometimes a tiny train ticket will remind me of an entire day I’d never have remembered otherwise. These also fit well into a journal to catalogue your trip chrnilogically.

Send Yourself Postcards

I don’t think enough people do this anymore! Instead of buying a postcard for someone else, buy one for yourself… OR, buy some for other poeople and for yourself, too! Write about what you did that day, where you’re staying, who you’re traveling with, something funny that happened, or even just how you’re feeling in that moment, then post it home.

By the time it arrives a few weeks later, you’ll probably have forgotten half of what you wrote. It’s such a fun little surprise waiting for you after the trip, and years later you’ll end up with a collection of postcards that almost work like tiny journal entries from different places around the world. SO fun (and also conveniently flat to store or scrapbook with)!

Make a Playlist for the Trip

Somethiing super fun that really solidifies memories from a trip is making a playlist specirically for it, with songs that you are listening to at the time, songs you have heard on the trip, and maybe even some tunes from the local radio station.

I do this for almost every trip now. Sometimes I’ll make a playlist before I leave, sometimes it slowly comes together while I’m traveling, and sometimes it’s completely accidental because I keep Shazaming songs I hear in cafés, beach clubs, bars, taxis, and random little shops.

Now, whenever one of those songs comes on, I’m instantly back there. It’s kind of amazing how strongly music is tied to memory. A three-minute song can remind you of an entire country, a road trip, or a specific moment like a sunset, a ridiculously fun night out with friends, or even a walk along the water.

Learn to Cook a Local Dish

I love a good cooking class when I travel, for so many reasons. Food is such a huge part of experiencing a destination anyway, so learning to make one local dish feels like taking a little piece of the trip – and culture – home with you.

Some of my favorite classes have also been surprisingly social. You’re usually cooking alongside other travelers, chatting with the instructor, asking questions about local ingredients, and then sitting down together afterwards to eat everything you’ve made. It’s the definition of a creative thing, but for some reason, cooking isnt always seen that way.

Even if you never cook the recipe again, you’ll probably think about that afternoon every time you eat that dish somewhere else. But the best way to really save the memory is keeping the recipe (most cooking classes will send the recipes home with you) and making it for your friends or family at home!

Collect Little Natural Souvenirs (Responsibly!)

I’m definitely not saying to start filling your suitcase with shells from protected beaches or pieces of coral… please don’t. But if it’s allowed where you are, I love collecting tiny natural souvenirs too. It’s also really grounding!

Some fun ideas are: pretty leaves in autumn, interesting seed pods, flowers to press, a four-leaf clover if you’re lucky enough to find one (my mum has always picked and pressed them my whole life so these remind me of her)! Basically, collect a couple of the little things that usually go unnoticed unti youre feeling anchored in the oresent moment.

Some people press them into journals, some frame them, and some just keep them tucked inside books or even wallets when they get home. They’re simple and free, and every time you come across them again you’ll remember exactly where you found them.

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Creative hobbies don’t have to replace photography, sightseeing, or all the other things you already love about traveling. I definitely don’t think I’ll ever stop carrying my camera around, and you’ll still find me trying to catch sunset somewhere with my Sony more often than not.

I just think adding one or two creative hobbies alongside everything else changes the way you experience a place and your presence while there.

Instead of only bringing home photos (or as well as having a full camera roll), you might come home with a little sketchbook, a stack of postcards, a notebook full of random memories, a painting that definitely isn’t perfect, or a drawer full of paper souvenirs that you plan to make into a collage someday. And THAT is the home of a traveler. <3