Intro: Travel at Home (and a Giveaway!)

Posted By Stephen Hoechst on Apr 24, 2020 | 6 comments

Let’s be honest – if you’re anything like me, you’ve got the travel bug and bad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like travel will be returning anytime soon. Over in the UK, we’re under stay-at-home orders until at least May 6th and likely much longer. Depending on where you live, it could be a while for you too.

Abroad, there’s talk that popular tourist destinations like Italy and New Zealand won’t let in tourists until 2021 at the earliest. While it’s completely understandable, it’s also disappointing for those hoping to visit. With travel on hold for the foreseeable future, it’s time to get creative.

What We’re Doing

We’ve been fortunate enough to experience some really cool destinations across the world. Since it looks like we’re going to be stuck at home for a while, we’re going to try to do our best to recreate some of those experiences.

One night a week, we’re going to have a “destination” night where we try to create an at-home travel experience. While it won’t be perfect, we’re still going to do our best to try it anyway. Does our flat look like an overwater villa in the Maldives? No, but we’ll make do with what we’ve got. However, we won’t just limit it to places we’ve been so far.

This looks just like our flat, but different.

Like many of you, we’ve also had future travel plans impacted by the coronavirus. In six weeks, we had trips to Israel, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Italy canceled. That doesn’t mean you have to miss out! At least not entirely.

Even if you had a trip canceled to a new destination, chances are you did a ton of pre-planning. This is a great way to actually put all that knowledge to use. You already did the research, so you might as well get something out of it.

Food Connects Us

Coffee and pastries in Milan. Take me back please…

One of the biggest things we associate with travel is food. Regardless of where you are in the world, food has the ability to take us back to that basserie in Paris, a hawker stall in Singapore, that cafe in Italy, or that taverna in Greece. Just in your local neighborhood, I’d bet you have a favorite Italian or Thai place that reminds you of your time abroad. Please, just don’t let your favorite be the place where their policy on soup, salad, and breadsticks is limitless.

Maybe you have a favorite restaurant you visited or found a place you planned on visiting on a canceled trip. Take their menu and try to recreate a couple items at home. Not much of a cook? I bet there’s a local restaurant that makes one of their dishes for delivery or takeout as well.

Food will be a big part of this for us. Whether we’re cooking a dish at home or ordering delivery from a local restaurant, we definitely plan to have some sort of cultural food featured with our destination nights. Don’t limit yourselves to just food though. There are countless ways to do this, so get creative!

Want to Play Along at Home?

If you’re reading this blog, we probably have two things in common:

1. You’re stuck inside
2. You love travel and miss it dearly

The goal here is to share our ideas and hopefully inspire you to do the same. We’re aiming to share one at-home travel experience every week for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we’re able to travel again before we run out of destinations…

Share Your Experience and Win

If you recreate any of our experiences or come up with your own, let us know! Just tag us on any of the socials (Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook) and use the hashtag #travelathome. We’ll pick some of our favorites and send out travel related goodies ranging from amenity kits to luggage tags. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even inspire us to recreate your experience on here.

Not on social media? Don’t worry. You can still let us know about your own experiences or ideas in the comments.

Final Thoughts

While you may not have the exact atmosphere, ingredients, or glassware, that kind of sums up this whole experience. Is it exactly what we had in mind? Probably not. However, things probably aren’t changing significantly anytime soon. It’s about taking what we have and making the best of it. This is one small way that we’re trying to bring some fun back into our lives and hopefully it does the same for you.