Armchair travel is exactly what it sounds like – experiencing and traveling the world from the comfort of your favorite chair (or sofa or bed). Through today’s online world, it is really quite easy, free, and instantaneous to travel somewhere we’ve never been before and virtually experience new cultures and food.
Whether it be books, television programs, YouTube clips, online travel blogs, or even Google Earth, the world is literally at our fingertips resting on our armchair.
Not sure where to get started? Have we got ideas for you!
The Unique and The Classic
Through apps and websites, the armchair traveler can virtually fly around famous landmarks or “walk” through a popular destination.
AirPano
It’s like being able to fly with this website that provides 360-degree panoramic aerial views of some of the most famous and beautiful places on Earth. Imagine soaring over the Pyramids of Giza or Mount Everest, and even the largest and coldest desert on the planet – Antarctica.
Google Earth Voyager
Google Earth really is everywhere and can take armchair travelers on exciting tours around famous cities, landmarks, and natural wonders all around the world.
Rick Steves’ Audio Europe
Rick Steves has been producing European tours on television for decades. Through his audio Europe app, one can sit back and listen to free guided tours to Paris, Florence, Vienna, and more.
The Original Armchair Activity
A good book and a comfy chair with a great floor lamp. Who could ask for more? These book titles will get your book traveling adventure on its way.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
This bestselling book inspired people around the world to go on journeys to create their own best versions of themselves. And there are countless books that have been written journaling just that since then. This books tells the story of the author who leaves all the modern-day trappings of so-called success behind to discover her own true self as she travels and eats and prays and loves her way through Italy, India, and the island of Bali in Indonesia.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Along those same lines of self-discovery, this is a story about Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, who travels from his home in Spain across the Egyptian desert in search of worldly treasure where he eventually has a fateful meeting with the alchemist who takes him on a philosophical journey.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
This book was an American national bestseller and is based on the true story of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a young man from a wealthy family who hitchhiked his way through North America and how he came to die in rugged Alaska. He departs in April of 1992, and his decomposed body is found 4 months later by a moose hunter. Riveting and memorable reading.
Let’s Go to the Movies
Before you sit down, grab that popcorn and your blankie and settle in for move night as you go globetrotting ala armchair.
I Dreamed of Africa
Despite the classic Out of Africa movie starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, our Africa flick pick has to be I Dreamed of Africa, starring Kim Basinger. In this film, a divorced socialite, shaken from a recent car crash, leaves Italy with a man she just met and heads to Kenya with her young son in tow. This touching true story is based on Kuki Gallmann’s memoirs.
Lost in Translation
This 2003 movie is about another human in personal crisis, this time a middle-aged American movie star, Bob, who travels to Tokyo for a $2 million ad endorsement. Along his journey he meets 20-something Charlotte who is left to make her way through Tokyo without her husband who gets sent outside the city for a photo assignment. With Tokyo as the backdrop, this film follows the new friends through the bright neon lights and vibrant culture of the city.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Yet again, this movie encourages the dreamer to start actually living, as we follow Walter Mitty around the globe in search of a missing photo negative for Life magazine where he works as a manager of negative assets. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But we digress. So he deduces that the photographer who did not send the negative he needs is in Greenland, and he sets out on a journey that takes him from Iceland to the Himalayas and beyond.
The Way to a Traveler’s Heart is Through Their Stomach
These people have the good fortune of eating their way around the globe. From street food to mountain ranches to spam musubi at a Hawaii luau, traipse your way along these interesting foodie journeys.
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Famous chef turned host, the late Anthony Bourdain, took viewers to, as his last show states, parts unknown. According to a quote from him, “eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice … they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.” He takes viewers on gastronomic journeys from Morocco to Peru to Columbia to the Congo, Libya, Myanmar, and more. Anthony’s final show took him on a poignant trip to his Lower East Side home turf, showing him enjoying a simple meal as he describes his trail through life before he died from suicide in June 2018.
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern
It is the goal of host Andrew Zimmern to find, as the title of his show says, bizarre foods, as he travels near and far in search of the unusual. We would be remiss if we did not mention that he once included spam musubi at a luau on the island of Oahu in this series, where despite eating far more exotic foods prior with gastronomic delight, such as cockroaches, fat wormy grubs, cow heel soup, fresh cow blood, and horse rib and rectum sausage, just to name a few, he cannot wrap his tastebuds around the idea of a slice of spam on a rectangle of rice, wrapped in seaweed.
Street Food on Netflix
