I get struck by wanderlust a lot more frequently than I am actually able to travel. I don’t think this is an unusual phenomenon in any way; travel takes time, money, and energy, which are often in short supply. Sometimes you can’t take off work, whether it’s because you’re too busy or have run out of vacation days or just think it would look bad to go swanning off on vacation any time you want to. Maybe you can’t spring for the plane ticket right now, to say nothing of the hotel and the meals and the entrance fees, and of course that one more coffee or tea or cocktail or pint, or the ice cream stand, or those wacky vintage sunglasses you just have to have. Maybe you’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately and just need to collapse on the couch with some takeout because you can’t face the dishes, much less an eight-hour flight.
We’ve all been there. We all know that sometimes things just don’t work out the way you would’ve liked. Nothing can equal the joys of exploring a new place or revisiting a beloved destination, but if you think outside of the itinerary, you may be able to channel those feelings into fun instead of misery.
If you’re dealing with a general feeling of wanting to go somewhere, travel writing anthologies are a great place to start. Collections like The Best American Travel Writing curate some of the year’s best work from various publications and put them all in one place for your reading pleasure. They include essays about the writers’ personal experiences all over the world, from cultured cities to remote wilderness to rustic villages. There are locations to spark everyone’s interest, and you may even find yourself hankering to go somewhere you’d never spared a second thought before. These anthologies can provide not only armchair travel, but also a journey of discovery.
But perhaps there is somewhere specific you’d like to go. You’ve gotten it in your head that you simply must go to this place, and preferably soon. What’s a grounded traveler to do? Reading and watching about a place is always a good solution. It’s easy, inexpensive, low energy (except for the effort of your heart going pitter-patter in excitement) and non-location-specific. You can read novels set in your dream location, pick up a memoir of someone living there, or learn some history from a good, readable non-fiction work. This approach is excellent because it allows you to travel in time as well as in space. It may even giving you some background knowledge of your destination, which will enrich your experience once you get there.
Movies and tv shows of course have the added value of letting you look at the place you’re going. If you don’t mind a bit of time travel, classic films are actually the best for this. There was a period when it was all the rage to shoot films in exotic locations, and to dedicate part of the film to the characters touring around. By doing so, of course, the audience is able to tour distant locations and see sights they may not make it to themselves. Many films even give information about the places and artwork on display. Some might argue that this multimedia guidebook style breaks up the narrative, but I’ll take it every time!
One of my favorite ways of traveling with traveling is through my computer. Of course you can look up pictures, read Wikipedia pages, and follow Instagram accounts, but do you ever just look at maps? I do.
Google Maps lets you check out a handy road map, and the closer you zoom in, the more businesses and landmarks you can locate. If you turn on satellite view, you can see a top-down view of the actual location. The closer you get, the more detail you get.
The best part, though, is that you can zoom all the way in to a street view, meaning you can see the location as though you were standing there looking around you. Arrows let you move up and down the streets, rectangles let you see pictures of buildings and other sites; some places of interest will even let you go inside.
You can stroll around your city of choice from anywhere you have a computer (yes, even work). You can pretend you’re there, and in the process do some passive travel planning, figuring out places you’d like to visit, neighborhoods you’d like to spend time in, and in the process you’ll familiarize yourself a bit with the lay of the land. It’s not the same as being there and walking through a place in person, but it will help things to look a but more familiar when you do get there.
Nothing beats the joys of travel, but when it isn’t an option, you can use the resources available to feel a bit better about being stuck at home.
