Map, Compass, Camera...

I would have to argue that, when traveling, the one thing you cannot leave home without is your camera. Toothbrushes and missing socks can (for the most part) be found where you’re going or at least in the airport. Your camera however, whether it’s a crappy little digital camera or a massive state of the art DSLR, can’t be replaced. And the whole point of traveling is making memories is it not? Obviously you don’t want to walk around with your camera permanently attached to your face but sometimes there are moments that, if you don’t capture them, you’ll miss forever.

When embarking on a journey such as mine (ours <3 really) part of the fun is capturing not only each site but also how we change from the first to the last. It’s going to take quite a long time to get from #1 to #936 (and lord knows there will be more added with each coming year).

At one point last summer, Matt mentioned that he’d love to have a Polaroid camera. I of course freaked because as far as I knew Polaroid had stopped making it’s film and the only way to find some was to scrounge around on eBay (this was before I learned about the impossible project). No me gusta. So I set about to find him an alternative.

I went to a quaint little photo blog that my friend directed me to and found this little beauty:

The new love of my life, so sorry Matthew

 Everyone meet Eugene! We named him Eugene because I demanded that it (now he I guess) had a name and Eugene Levy happened to be on the TV at the time. That’s how naming things tends to go with Matt but, I digress.

Eugene is a Fuji Instax Wide Instant Camera -link and he is my (our :P) baby and I love him and he is the best. I know everyone thinks their baby is the best at everything but I can tell you right now that I am right and you are all wrong. Eugene came into our lives for Matt’s birthday this year but we haven’t been able to use him until now. I honestly can’t say I’ve ever been more pleased with like… anything.

It’s amazingly simple to use. I’m not sure if it’s the camera itself or where we got it from but it came complete with the batteries in place and ready to use. I also was able to buy it packaged with two boxes of film. Simply open up the back of the camera and follow the arrows to slide the film in. Then turn it on, point and click.

When you’ve done that, you get pictures like these….

Eugene's first picture :) Isn't it pretty?

It's a rather imperfect picture but that is the nature of instant photos and I love it

That little black line won't show up on your camera if you don't drop it like Matt did. So, just don't drop it.

If Matt and I can do it, so can you. 

The only downside about Eugene is that he is quite large. However there are other smaller versions like this one that we are thinking of buying for those trips that take us farthest away from home. 

Because there’s a limited amount of pictures on every roll, we’ve decided to use it only for World Heritage Sites. We’ll have two pictures for every site: one of the site itself and one of us with the site.

We’ve always talked about how we’re going to decorate any home we have together with a massive map with pins placed in all the sites we’ve seen. We’ve recently come across this map created by UNESCO (for only £2) specifically listing all of the sites. All together it’s absolutely perfect to make one wall in each place we end up living a way to keep track of it all.

And, because Eugene is so wonderful and I can’t stop showing off his pictures, here is a bit of a sneak preview of our latest adventure.

Guess where we are?!

xT