You just had one of the best vacations ever but now you’re stuck at home with no travel plans in the near future. Yet as your travel itch becomes more difficult to scratch, what can you do to temporarily satisfy your wanderlust before you’re able to go on another extended trip? You might be surprised just how many things you can see and do that are close to home. Here are just a few suggestions to help quell your wanderlust between trips.
If you have the wanderlust blues, one of the best ways to reinvigorate your mood is to simply stay active. After all, travel typically requires a fair amount of walking and by maintaining or improving your level of fitness, you’re conditioning yourself for your next excursion while also enjoying a better and healthier quality of life. Although hiking or walking is all but essential on a year round basis, it’s also important to add other forms of exercise, such as flexibility training and upper body exercises to lessen your risk of injury. Depending on your routine of choice, the upper body work may include swimming, rock climbing, pull ups or perhaps most important of all, weight training. Any type of exercise has an assortment of health benefits but weight training is especially helpful in improving bone density, maintaining a healthy body weight, building muscle, elevates your mood and a slew of other benefits.
Even if you think you know your city very well, chances are there are a few places you haven’t yet explored or are unfamiliar with. If you live in a major metropolitan area, the task of finding a new place to visit should be fairly easy. But if you live in a smaller town, you can still play the role of a tourist by visiting a new neighborhood or park, shop at someplace new, dining in a new restaurant or if practical, staying overnight in a local hotel or B&B. Of course if there is public transportation in your place of residence, you can make yourself more travel savvy by studying transit maps and timetables.
If visiting your city isn’t enough or you’ve just run out of ideas, then perhaps a daytrip to a nearby destination can help solve your aching wanderlust. As an example, if you live in San Francisco, you could take a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge then visit one or more of the fabulous wineries in Napa or Sonoma County in the world renowned California Wine Country about an hour away. On the other hand, if you’re the more adventurous sort, you can bring your bike along (or bike altogether) and treat yourself to a sip and cycle tour to any other the very bike friendly wineries, such as the breathtaking Castello di Amorosa in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County’s Buena Vista Winery, the oldest commercial winery in California. Regardless of where you live, there are bound to be numerous new and interesting places to visit that are within a short distance from home. If you need more than a day, just plan on finding an interesting place to stay, whether it’s a hotel, motel, B&B, campsite or vacation rental.
If you don’t already have a list of dream destinations, it might be a good time to start putting one together. This can be done as easily as grabbing a pen and paper, a chalkboard or even a digital board with place pins that are commonly found on the social media site Pinterest. While many Pinterest members have hundreds if not thousands of place pins on their respective maps, you can make the process far simpler by merely adding a few destinations of your choosing. To make the dream destination board more interesting, try adding one or more from as many continents as you can.
After compiling a dream destination list or board, try selecting one or more places you would like to go for what could be the trip of a lifetime. After you’ve made a few choices, you can jump-start your wanderlust by reading books and travel blogs and watching travel shows and videos to get yourself familiarized with the destination of your choice. If you’re still undecided on a travel destination, there are a number of leading cities that have been described as the best to visit this year. Top American cities to visit this year include Portland, San Francisco and Sacramento, Snowmass and Gateway in Colorado, Austin, Boston, Santa Fe and Charleston. Among the notable international cities for 2017 are Lisbon, Barcelona, Durban, South Africa, Guadalajara, Bangkok, Seoul, Singapore and the fascinating ancient capital of Nanjing in China. Want to really be creative? Try placing a few cities or a world map on a dart board or felt board and let your skills determine your next adventure.