In between trips and in desperate need of a travel fix? Read this list.
1. Go for a hike
2. Wander around your city’s Chinatown
3. Visit a grocery store that caters towards foreigners (a hispanic or asian grocery store) and buy some strange-looking chips or candy you’ve never tried before
4. Get on a bus without knowing where it’s headed
5. Cook Indian food
6. Throw a travel-themed party and have everyone bring a dish or game from their favorite country
7. Join a foreign language Meetup Group and practice your French / Spanish / Chinese with other language lovers
8. Read The Geography of Bliss
9. Read I’m a Stranger Here Myself
10. Take a language course
11. Watch Slumdog Millionaire
12. Spritz your wrists with a travel-themed perfume
13. Do a mock vacation photo photo shoot with your friends like the characters in the movie Green Card. Grab your skis and pretend you’re on the Swiss Alps or throw on your bikini and a surfboard and make believe you’re in Hawaii.
14. Hang out at the airport and play a people-watching game
15. Go Geocacheing
16. Make a postcard collage
17. Try a new food (like Ethiopian, Mongolian or Indonesian)
18. Host a couch surfer
19. See your city in a new light by traveling through it in a new – slower – way. Cruise through your town on a bicycle or roller blades.
20. Travel to a neighborhood you’ve never visited before and take artistic photos (even if it’s only pictures of the sidewalk or people’s front lawns).
21. Go on a long walk with a kid or a dog. Their curiosity and excitement for the world can be contagious.
22. Participate in a flash mob.
23. Go scuba diving (in the ocean or a lake) and see the world from a new perspective.
24. Go camping
25. Start a travel blog
26. Take a staycation and book a night or weekend at a hotel in your own town or city.
27. Go on a meditation retreat
28. Create a travel bucketlist on Pinterest
29. Read Into Thin Air
30. Create a playlist of your favorite travel songs and go for a long walk in a park or the woods.
What do you do to quench your thirst for travel when you’re in between trips?
Main photo by: Mitya Kuznetsov
I like all of these!
I also: try a new restaurant on a weekly basis in my own city.
Participate in online travel forums like Lonely Planet Thorntree.
Photo walks.
Organize my travel photos.
Write stories about my travels.
Write reviews of places I’ve stayed/eaten/activities I’ve tried on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor.
Incorporate foreign foods I love so much at home/try cooking a recipe of something I liked when traveling.
Great list! And amazed to see #15 “Geocaching”. Indeed, it IS a “world-wide game of hide and seek” after all, and I’ve been doing it for 9 years (and more than 1,000 finds). I’ve found caches now in every country I visit. More than 2 million caches hidden worldwide, and I’ve even found a few in airports on layovers. Once I even deliberately scheduled myself for a 12 hr. layover in Amsterdam and… dropping a note in the geocaching forums, a great bunch of Amsterdam geocachers met me at the train station and gave me a full day’s tour – including one cache we found under a bridge on the canal via paddle boats!
So are you a geocacher? It truly is great fun – whether you do it in your hometown, or when on the trail traveling the globe. I just returned from Laos and found a cache at an obscure monastery – right under the noses of the monks who lived there (the cache owner had permission to hide it and the monks watch over it.)
@Dyanne – Yes, I’ve gone geocaching! I think it’s a wonderful and clever idea. I’ve never tried it in another country though. Which country was the best for geocacheing? Do you have a favorite? How did the treasures differ from country to country?
You didn’t mention Travel Blogging which keeps me sane… home from our RTW trip and not traveling every day doesn’t mean I can’t share the travel love. Try to post a little from the trip, a little from home, a a little motivation plus a little from our current travels. Thank you for the Great list!!!!
@Kasey – “Write reviews of places I’ve stayed/eaten/activities I’ve tried on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor.” – That’s a good idea! I should update my TripAdvisor account.
@Anne – Ha, yes I did! Check out #25 on this list. 🙂 Thanks for the RT, by the way!
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