4 ways to scratch the travel itch during social distancing

Where can travelers direct their wanderlust until it’s OK to travel again?

There’s no substitute for immersing yourself in a new place in person—if there were, travel wouldn’t be such a big industry. In fact, recent research suggests a correlation between visiting new places and experiencing more positive emotions.¹ With that not an option, we look at the next best thing: Activities you can do to immerse yourself in other cultures and experiences and perhaps get some of those positive emotions—without leaving home.

1. Learn a new language

Trying to speak a new language while you’re abroad is one of the fastest ways to get out of your comfort zone. Practicing at home can’t match the thrill of using your hard-won vocabulary in real life for the first time, but it can help you live out the fantasy while you perfect your accent.

Language-learning apps that allow for easy daily lessons have proliferated in recent years, including Duolingo, Babbel, Memrise, and Rosetta Stone. Pronunciation dictionaries such as Forvo can help you hit the right notes on specific words and phrases, or just hear what other languages sound like.

If you really want to strut your stuff, download a translation app like Google Translate or iTranslate Converse and speak into it to see if your language skills are good enough for the app to understand. 

2. Cook the cuisine at home

Bringing the flavors of far-away lands into your kitchen is a double benefit: Not only will you be living out a little slice of travel, you’ll also spice up your grocery list and recipe rotation after months of social distancing. Getting started is as easy as looking up your choice of dish or cuisine on your favorite recipe website. (Not sure where to begin? Popular cooking sites Allrecipes and The Spruce Eats have directories where you can search by region.)

One easy way to jump into world cuisine is with meal kit service Blue Apron. Subscribers sign up for a weekly delivery of 2- or 4-portion meals, and can select from a menu of at least 7 recipes each week, many of them inspired by dishes from around the world. For the week of July 6, options included Italian chicken with prosciutto panzanella, Korean pork and rice cakes, and vadouvan shrimp with sweet chili sauce. Even better, AAA members can get $60 off their first 3 boxes.

3. Travel digitally with virtual tours

If the tastes, smells, and sounds of travel just have you wanting more, live vicariously through the many virtual tours you’ll find on the web. These include:
 

• Museums: Museums around the world are offering digital ways to see their collections. These include the Uffizi in Florence, the British Museum in London, and the Met in New York, among others. See more museums you can visit from your couch.
  
• National parks: See some of America’s most splendorous landscapes without having to set foot outside with Google Earth’s virtual tours of 31 national parks. Not sure where to start? Get pointers from our look at 10 bucket-list national parks, as well as more resources for visiting virtually.
  
• UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Google Earth can also take you on tours of 30 World Heritage Sites. Many will be familiar, like the Great Sphinx, while others will probably be new discoveries, like Domica Cave in Slovakia.

And those are just scratching the surface—you can also virtually ski the slopes of the Dolomites in Italy, explore the interior of the cruise ship Viking Star , and even do some interplanetary travel by visiting Mars, courtesy of NASA’s Curiosity rover.

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