As if the coronavirus didn’t halt most travel plans for the better part of two years, a conflict half the world away is threatening to make vacations either impossible or simply unaffordable for many. If you’re like many Americans and are taking more of a “wait and see” approach to your vacations at least in the short term, then maybe a virtual vacation is more your style.
While price increases, conflicts, and pandemics have almost become a very unfortunate part of our world, taking a vacation (even from the comfort of your home) doesn’t have to be sacrificed due to uncontrollable circumstances. So whether you still aren’t ready to get on a plane or to travel for vacation, here are some virtual vacation ideas to fuel your wanderlust.
Take a Trip Across the Pond
If even for only a day, you can take a trip across the Atlantic without ever leaving your home. From London to the Vatican to Paris, one of the many great things to come out of the pandemic was how many beautiful World Heritage sites, museums, and locations opened up their beauty to the internet.
With most of Europe on lockdown or in restrictions over most of 2020 and 2021, some of Europe’s most popular and well-traveled museums and cultural hubs now have virtual tours available online. From the comfort of your home, you can tour the Sistine Chapel, explore The Louvre Museum in Paris, or take a stroll through the sprawling British Museum.
Even if you have visited or plan to visit these sites in the future, taking a virtual tour of them from your home allows you to better study them, understand the meanings behind artwork or artifacts, and generally improve your experience (once you get to visit) without crowds or without the crunch for time. Never underestimate the power and beauty of these fascinating places full of history even in a virtual world!
Take a Walking Tour of a Historic City
Hop on YouTube and search for “walking tours” and hundreds of results pop up. No matter where you’ve always wanted to go in the world, there’s someone who’s done an immaculate job of documenting their time traveling through the city.
Pro Walk Tours on YouTube, for example, is one of the leaders of walking tours for any number of cities throughout the world. Bolstering close to 450,000 subscribers and with millions of views, Pro Walk Tours takes you through the lovely streets of your favorite destinations or destinations to-be. From Paris to Cairo or Italy to Vancouver, you can visit any number of destinations across the globe.
Many videos are well over an hour long and are filmed in 4K giving you a very much in-person view of some of the most traveled destinations in the world.
Visit a National Park
If outdoors are more your thing, then take a virtual tour of some of America’s most precious natural creations. The National Park Service offers several virtual tours of National Historic Sites, links to National Park virtual tours, and plenty of live webcams for several of the nation’s most popular National Park Sites.
For many of the most popular destinations, the NPS has virtual tours available on each park’s website. The Grand Canyon can be seen in this link, for example. In addition to the resources available from the National Parks Service, YouTube can also be a wealth of information for virtual tours. With many 4K drone tours of some of the most popular sites within the National Parks, you’ll likely never run out of tours to take.
