Welcome back to Have Geeklets, Will Travel, a summer travel series that will help you think up cool travel plans that will appeal to both kids and adults. From geocaching expeditions in your backyard to factory tours in far-flung states, we’ll be providing ideas all summer long to get you out of your house and on the road for great adventures.
On rainy, dreary days like today, we do a lot of armchair traveling rather than taking day trips. This entails grabbing the iPad, sitting down on the sofa together, and opening Google Maps for a little virtual trip.
Sometimes we revisit places we’ve actually been. We put in an address for our favourite restaurant in London and drop into the street view of Kensington. By dragging our finger, we can figuratively walk the route between the restaurant and our former hotel, talking about what we’d be seeing along the way. We once snaked across Smith Island, finding a road we didn’t know existed through Ewell. We take road trips, going between our house and family and friends, finding alternate routes that take us past interesting detours that we tuck away in the back of our head for our next actual trip. We spend hours virtually walking around amusement parks, staring down at the Dumbo ride or circling Space Mountain.
Sometimes we go to place we haven’t been to yet. We keep a long wish list of American cities and foreign countries we’d like to visit. We’ve taken the kids virtually to Israel via Google Maps while we save up money for an actual trip. We’ve poked around Scotland, which is the next country on our upcoming travel list.
And sometimes we search for places we’ll never go. We’ve tried to find Hogwarts to no avail. Same goes for Middle Earth. We’ve visited the very real island of Mingulay, which is logistically difficult to reach and we’ll likely never visit. We’ve zoomed in, trying to make ourselves feel as if we’re walking the wind-blown coastline.
It’s a great rainy day activity that gives you some of the benefits of travel without ever leaving your living room.
Where are you going to virtually travel today?
Oh! We’ve done this, too, and I totally forgot to add it to my list! I’ll have to go and link.
Where did you go? Virtually, that is 🙂