Five tips for travel at home
When it comes to travel today, no doubt we are all doing more dreaming than doing. But travel is also a state of mind, and you don’t necessarily have to go far away to feel far away.
If you cancelled an impending vacation, have cleaned out all your cupboards and drawers, and social isolation has you feeling cooped up, here are some vicarious travel ideas to bring the world into your home.
1. There are more than 1,000 UNESCO World Heritage sites around the world. Twenty are in Canada. Of these, 10 are natural sites, nine are cultural sites and there is one mixed site. How many can you name? Which country has the most sites? Challenge your family members – who can name the most! Get the complete list and learn more at whc.unesco.org/en/list. Photographer/blogger Gary Arndt has a passion for World Heritage sites, having visited over 400 around the world in the last 13 years. You’ll fine awesome photographs and fascinating facts at his website: everything-everywhere.com/unesco-world-heritage-sites-in-canada/
2. Spin Around Google Earth with the I’m Feeling Lucky Button – on Safari or Chrome. Insert the destination of your dreams into the search bar, click The I’m Feeling Lucky Button. Bypass ‘Go To Jail,’ do not ‘collect $200’ and go directly to all the information you could imagine on a special destination.
3. Doesn’t everyone have a shoe box full of photos from pre-digital days? This could be the perfect time for the whole family to make a photo book, (either digital or not) and rekindle all those memories. A gazillion website gives details for doing it digitally. And then there’s the good old-fashioned photo album.
4. Love adventure travel? Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi is a spell-binding memoir of sailing around the world. Aebi was an unambitious 18-year-old, a bicycle messenger in New York City going nowhere – until her father offered her a challenge: she could choose either a college education or a 26-foot sloop in which she would have to sail around the world – alone. For the next two and a half years, over 27,000 miles, with only her cat as companion, she discovered wondrous beauties, experienced unimaginable horrors, and suffered through a terrifying collision with a tanker. The sheer desire for adventure became a spiritual quest that turned her life around. That’s the magic of travel.
5. Plan a trip a year in advance. Start saving now. Start studying now. If you’re your trip takes you to a non-English speaking country, www.duolingo.com is a good place to begin so you’ll know how to ask for directions when you get there. Start cooking now. Create your own test kitchen, experimenting with some of your dream destination’s national dishes.
Anna Hobbs is a former magazine editor and a freelance travel writer.
