Looking through the glass clock at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.
Take a Virtual Tour
Is there a place that you planned on visiting but can’t because of the pandemic? No worries! There’s a good chance that you can tour the destination virtually. As of this writing, we found online virtual tours for the Vatican, Buckingham Palace, the Natural History Museum in London, and one of our favorite museums in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay. In truth, we found A LOT of virtual tours—too many to list here. You can even take a trip to the top of Mont Blanc! Here’s a tip: Do an online search for a destination that interests you and include the key words “virtual tour” to see what pops up. The really good tours, like the Musee d’Orsay, let you wander hallways, zoom in on artwork, and click on objects to learn more.
Would you like to be overwhelmed? Check out the Goose Arts and Culture page. Googe A&C has enough content to keep you occupied for weeks!
Fond memories of trails hiked and mountains climbed.
Organize Stories From Past Trips
Raise your hand if you have a million travel photos stored on your phone or computer. What about old journal entries that you secretly hoped to turn into a memoir, novel or blog, but didn’t? A quarantine is the perfect opportunity to bring those treasures to light. Turn some of those photos into greeting cards. Make a calendar. Build a website that showcases your greatest work. Start a blog. If you ever wanted to write a book about your past travels or do something creative with your millions of travel photos and journal scribblings, a quarantine is a great time to do it!
Chalkboard menu at a French crêperie.
Learn a New Language
It’s not necessary to know the local language when you’re traveling in a foreign country, but it certainly makes the experience easier and infinitely richer. Even if you never become fluent, just the simple act of saying hello in a person’s native tongue will go a long way toward building relationships and breaking down cultural barriers. There are a ton of language learning books and apps on the market, and one of our favorite free apps is DuoLingo. You probably won’t learn to speak like a native with this app (it’s heavy on direct translation from reading and listening), but you’ll get a good dose of vocabulary. We recommend supplementing DuoLingo with a more formal program like Living Language, Berlitz or Rosetta Stone. At the time of this writing, Rosetta Stone is offering a free 3 month trial for students. YouTube can also be a good resource. For intermediate and advanced learners, online foreign newspapers are a gold mine for learning. Google books also offers downloadable versions of many foreign language literature classics. The point is, put your self isolation to good use by learning a foreign language. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to say “soup du jour” like a native-speaker the next time you visit Paris.
Simple pleasures.
Read A Book
Few things are cozier than curling up on the couch with a comfortable blanket, a warm cup of tea, and a good book. Books take us around the world, and they offer a level of richness, perspective, and detail that we’ll never get from a 50 word post on social media. The death of the book has been much publicized, but we we’re not convinced that books will ever go out of style. Try it for yourself. Shut off the electronic devices, open a book, and let yourself be transported to distant lands. Right now we’re reading a book called “A History of Mountaineering in the Alps” by Claire Eliane Engel. The book was published in 1950 and chronicles the pioneers of mountaineering and tourism in the Alps, many of whom were not climbers as befits the status today. It’s hard to imagine, but there used to be a time when people were not at all interested in climbing mountains for pleasure. Many of the first “alpinists” were, in fact, scientists, and their most important piece of climbing equipment was not the rope, but the barometer. Would you like to know more? Contact us. We’ll recommend some destination-specific books.
Sunrise over the Bachsee in the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland.
Dream Now. Travel Later.
Losing your job during a quarantine is no fun. We get it. But have faith, the pandemic won’t last forever. Plus, there’s absolutely no cost for dreaming and planning. Is there a place that you’ve been curious about? Please give us a call or send us an email. We love chatting about far-flung lands. You can also use our online questionnaire to get the conversation started. And don’t worry, our tips and chats are absolutely free. No mask required either!
