As an avid traveller and someone who has carved a career based around people travelling, the pandemic has had a huge impact on my life.
My day to day activity has changed from researching and planning a number of holidays, to watching and waiting for news on when borders will open, vaccines will be available and travel bubbles will be implemented.
One thing i know for sure is no one has the answer, and if I have learnt anything over the past few months it’s that things can change dramatically, month to month, week to week or even day by day. It’s actually impossible to make firm travel plans in this current climate.
Once all the borders opened up after our first wave here in Australia, we had planned to visit relatives interstate, around Christmas time. But, those plans came crashing down with borders being slammed shut, yet again!, and two weeks in quarantine being threatened to those caught on the wrong side of the border, and that is only if you are allowed back in to your home state at all.
Like an addiction, travel is not just something you can cut out of your life. Once you start travelling, planning travel, dreaming of travel, you do get bitten by the travel bug and it is not something that is easy to get out of the system. So what do you do in a pandemic when actual travel is almost impossible?
Here are 5 easy ways I’m still keeping the travel dream alive.
1/ Instagram- Back in March 2020, when travel halted I turned my attention to Instagram. Along with learning how it all worked, I found it a great artistic outlet to share all of our past and current trips. I enjoyed creating the pretty pictures in squares, and started to seek out and admire other people’s pictures too. With this came the dream of visiting all these beautiful places one day. Instagram is a great place to get lost, you can travel through the pages and pages of beautiful accounts and easily spend hours within this one little app. Come follow me @kb4travel
2/ Food- Travel is more than just looking at different places. It’s hearing the sounds of the horns beeping in a busy street, or experiencing the smells of the foreign market place. With this comes trying the different foods offered in each country. Luckily by living in a multi cultural nation we can do this pretty easily, just by ordering from and supporting a local small business. We love our local Pho, Butter chicken, Nachos, Pizza, Pad Thai and more. This list is pretty extensive, you can travel to a different country through food every night of the week. What’s your favourite?
3/ Local Outings- Whilst we can’t travel too far we have enjoyed a number of local walks, parks and natural reserves we previously had not discovered. Just by googling various things in your local area you’ll be sure to discover something you have not previously known about. We recently found a fabulous walk along the cliff tops of Sorrento. We had visited Sorrento often but had never done this walk and were pretty amazed by some of the views. Check it out on our You tube video ‘millionaires walk’, here.
We also had a short staycation on Phillip Island, which is only 1 and a half hours away.
4/Travel Planning- Way back in July 2020, we decided to stretch our finances and purchase a motor home. It’s our dream to travel around our own country, Australia. One day we would like to see it all but this will take many years of research and planning. We plan to do it in parts, over weekends, weeks away and maybe even month long adventures. With this we have so much to plan, even down to the lay out of the storage in the motor home, not just all the amazing places we will go. We look forward to finally getting it in March 2021, we hope!
5/ Virtual Travel- I have seen many people write blogs about online offerings. There are some very cute things you can view, like live zoo footage or even take a ride on some of Disneyland's best rides, virtually of course! Use google to explore many famous travel destinations world wide like the Louvre Museum in Paris or Buckingham place in London. There does not seem to be an end to what you can do virtually these days, and now is the perfect time to take advantage of it all.
For more options, check out the following blogs by CS Ginger, Travel Experiences for entertaining kids during the Corona Pandemic and Shipping Across the Globe, 15 ways to travel the world virtually. They have also written about some nifty ideas for keeping the travel dreams alive during the pandemic. #keepdreaming
As always, i'm available should you want more information on any of the information presented above, contact me via email at kylie@kb4travel.com.au or through any of my socials.