#stayhome, how to travel from your couch

How to travel from your couch? You may think that’s not possible, don’t you? However, it is possible and we’re going to find out how to do it together.

#stayhome is the hashtag launched on social media by VIPs and influences to make people understand that if we follow the rules and stay home maybe we will be able to contain this virus and return very soon to normal life.

But it’s not the virus I want to talk about, I promised myself not to talk about it. I don’t know about it so I don’t want to give incorrect information, but I want to focus on another aspect: how to travel from your couch.

How to travel from your couch: 4 ideas plus 1

Travelling from your couch is possible, in fact you do not need to go to the other side of the ocean to ‘see’ a place. Don’t you believe me? Read on.

Read travel literature

Since I was a child I have always loved reading books of all kinds because they allowed me (and still do today) to travel with my mind and to imagine distant places or at least places that I have not yet seen.

Travel literature deals with travel, the motivations behind it, destinations and everything connected to the journey itself. And it does so in a way that allows the reader to empathize with the main characters of the book and be transported through the pages to Bangkok, or to Istanbul, rather than to New York. Among the various books I’ve read, the one I liked the most is “Better than fiction: true travel tales from great fiction writers,” published by Lonely Planet. It is a collection of travel stories written by great novel writers.

Among the books I have read in Italian and that I re-read every now and then my favourite is “Il Grande Boh” by Jovanotti, I am not sure if it’s also available in English though.

If reading isn’t your cup of tea, you might also consider listening to an audiobook. I prefer to read but I know some people enjoy listening to books very much.

Watch travel movies or TV series set in a certain location

Who doesn’t like to relax on the couch watching a movie or enjoying their favorite TV series? Well, that’s also a way to travel, don’t you think?

Watching “Sex & the City” for example, I feel like I am in New York together with Carrie, Samanta and the others, or if I watch “Downton Abbey” or “The Queen” all of a sudden I am in UK. If I really want to travel, I can always watch movies like “Australia,” “Eat, Pray, Love” or “Motorcycle Diaries.” In fact, if you have any other nice travel movie to recommend, I’m all ears.

Look at photos of past trips to make an album

How many times do we promise to ourselves to look at photos from past trips? Maybe print them out and make a good album? Well, what better time than this! Now it’s the perfect time to select the photos, decide in which format to print them and make a nice album to browse whenever, for one reason or another, we can not travel. I did it some time ago and the result is wonderful, plus now I can really relive my travels just by going from one page of my album to another!

Organize your next trip

What could be better than starting to organize your next trip? When all this fuss is over, the desire to travel will be even stronger, so we may already start thinking about where we’d like to go for our next vacation and plan the various things already. For example, if we decide that the next trip will be an on the road, we could already think about the different stops that we would like to do along the way, what we would like to see, etc. We could already write down museums, restaurants, experiences that we would like to try. So, when we finally get going we’ll have everything ready and we’ll just have to pack.

Exploring the surroundings of your own home

Okay, I cheated. For this activity you can not really sit on your couch but in this period of staycation, we could also take advantage to explore the surroundings of our home. How many times have we said ‘yes yes, as soon as I have time I go for a walk in the woods near the house or I go for that easy walk that my friend did’, well now we can do it. The directives say avoid the crowded places, but if you go for a nice walk outdoors and ALONE there is no danger! Reconnecting with nature has so many benefits that we could just devote ourselves to this to defeat fear and boredom.

Can you think of other activities to travel from your couch? If so, write them in the comments, I’m curious and I need more ideas!