With the world mired in a pandemic and many would-be globetrotters stuck at home (for the time being), here are some tips that will help you pass the time.

1) Look over old photos of the last trip you took. Pick out your favorites and pin them up on the wall. Oooh and ahhh every time you pass by.

2) Talk to your favorite travel companion – spouse, best friend, neighbor – or whoever it may be about the greatest trip the two of you took together.

3) Go through your wardrobe and set aside the perfect travel outfit you’d like to wear on your next trip to wherever. Be sure it’s something you love to wear as it’s going to be your all-out favorite, every day, go-to garment. Try it on when you’re tired and dirty to see how you really look in it.

4) Locate your passport. Check that it’s still valid and that you still look like the photo inside. Be sure the photo and you look enough alike even though years have gone by so you won’t be accused by an immigration officer of impersonating some other traveler.

5) Remember the best meal you ate on your last trip and try to prepare it for yourself in your kitchen. If you can’t find the right ingredients in your pantry, substitute. You’ll never know the difference anyhow. If you have to, throw it in the garbage.

6) Take the kitchen scissors to your hair and cut off several inches, particularly the gray, trying to approximate the haircut you got at one of the hotel beauty salons you visited on your itinerary. If no one recognizes you with your new hairstyle, just wrap a scarf around your head and say to yourself “What the hell – I’m beautiful, regardless.”

7) While sheltered in-place in your home, spend seven hours each day walking back and forth in your living room, getting in shape for the many hours of walking you will undertake on your next trip.

8) Look up the nearest world-class museum near or in your city and make a list of some of the famous artists whose work is being shown there. Try your hand at painting a portrait you’d like to see hanging in the museum.

9) Wish for a miserable rainy, muddy, windy day and enjoy an outdoor “walk on the wild side” such as one you enjoyed on your last trip.

l0) Look around at your home surroundings. Be thankful you have a place called home in which you can shelter in place while not traveling and in which you can plan the next great travel adventure awaiting you when Covid-19 has been vanquished.

By Marty Sarbey de Souto, CTC