six ways to travel without leaving your hometown

The travel bug has bitten me especially hard this month, and I am itching to go new places, see new sights, walk on new roads and blaze new trails through new forests. However, big extravagant soul-searching excursions simply aren't practical for me right now, (SADNESS) so I've been finding other ways to satisfy my craving.

# 1! - Ride the bus and people-watch

I had to get on the bus the other day after work, which I normally don't enjoy very much because it takes such a very long time to get from the pool back to my house. But when I slid my ticket into the terminal and collected my transfer slip earlier this week, I decided to pretend that I was going somewhere new and exciting. After all, I'd be thrilled to bits at the opportunity to ride the bus through a small town in England - so why should here be any different?


# 2 - Go to a bookstore and wander for as long as you like

Try a bookstore you've never really explored before, and give yourself at least 45 minutes to peruse the shelves, track down the different sections and genres and run your fingers down hundreds of different spines. Find all the children's books you read as a child, look at the glossy photographs in the art section, and smell all the unwritten words and untold stories in the aisle set aside for notebooks and journals. There are so many stories stacked away, awash with colour on the numerous wooden bookshelves - so many new places and people and characters to explore!

# 3 - Read a book of poetry 

Preferably in a coffee shop, after completing #2! (I particularly enjoy Tennyson.)


# 4 - Write a letter!

(a real one. With a stamp and everything.) Write to an old friend or a new one, on nice stationary or plain old lined paper. Write in cursive, if you know how, or your neatest printing if you're a little rusty. (Like me. Technically, I can use "grown-up writing," but it doesn't come very naturally.) Think all the way back to grade four, when you learned how to use a heading and greeting, at least three body paragraphs, and a properly affectionate closing; drag all the old rules out and get fancy!


# 5 - Try an exotic recipe

It's easy to get in food ruts, stuck in a cycle of the same old breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Try something new this week - look up a recipe from a place you've always wanted to visit and make some of their food for a change! (I'm partial to pad thai, myself...)


# 6 - See the world through new eyes

If you were visiting your own hometown, what would amaze you? It's so easy to forget to look at the people, places and things you see every day; you kind of glaze over after a while, and just see tree, house, road, instead of looking for the details. Which trees on your street are turning orange and red first this year? How many people have started decorating for fall, filling porches and lawns with scarecrows and bales of hay and sometimes even stalks of corn (maybe this is just a Canadian thing?) Whose chalk drawings cover the street in front of their houses - what words did they write today?

How do you stay inspired when the wanderlust bug bites you? Do you ever feel stuck in the same place, or do you love the familiarity of home?

xx,
Olivia

p.s.

(the book photographed is "When Wanderers Cease to Roam; A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put," by Virginia Swift. I've been reading it off and on over the past few weeks - so much gorgeousness. Read immediately.)